Image provided by: Library of Congress; Washington, DC
About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1925)
The Chemawa American Printed at Chomawa, Vol. XXVI Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education Wednesday, April 1, 1925 CHARACTER AND REPUTATION Students, you who remain at Chemawa for a term of years and complete your full course in whatever vocation you have chosen and graduate with good principles and a fine character, backed with a good reputation, are made for life. This reputation is bet ter than the greatest financial capital. It will make you friends and open up a sure way to honor, hap piness and easy circumstances. How mortified some of us would be if we knew just how our associates rated us. For instance, one of us might be rated 100 for politeness, 75 for kind ness, 50 for truthfulness, 25 for ability, and so on. Every time we have dealings, or come in contact with another, we get a rating. People know whether we are advancing or retrograding. Each and every one of us go through life labeled all over with tags for those who know us. We may be rated high in most respects, but the general average may be cut low by some vicious habit. If you have put your whole self into your daily life while here your words will have much force, your influence much weight. If that whole self be true and high, pure and kind, vigorous and forceful, you can do what you will. Every act of yours is a guide board that tells people about you and indicates the way you have lived, so, aside from having a definite aim, and that aim lived up to conscientiously and efficiently, it pays in con tentment and success. Do we have many students here who live day by day without a rudder to steer them? Shiftless, pur poseless, drifting along day after day without purpose or plan, with no strong aim to advance. Do we have any of that kind here? Chemawa resorts to every means to expand and de velop your possibilities; she urges you to struggle along day by day, securing a little here and a little there until you have reached the stature of a rounded out man or woman. We try in every reasonable way to induce you to progress, to arouse the best that is in you, presenting to you pictures of success in order to have you put forth your best efforts until you make them real in your life. This is what we are trying to do. We want your co-operation, your perseverance, No. 24 your application to your work, then by patience and industry you can graduate with honor. You cannot get there, however, by counterfeiting and imitations, for cunning and crafty counterfeits are soon detected—you will get just what you have earned. Your advancement comes in proportion to your work —your worth. Only the true and pure can stand the test. By your work and perseverance you show what you are made of; dare to be yourself; have the courage to be somebody. Every deed you perform stands forth to your credit or discredit and prophesies your future. Keep your record clean. The test of the student is manifested in the spirit in which he goes about his work. If he goes about it grudgingly, if his enthusiasm and love for it do not lift it out of the “commonness” and make it a de light instead of a bore, he will not go very far. What you do is a part of yourself. It is the expression of what you stand for. When you see a student’s work you see him practically as he is. We cannot think very much of ourselves when we are not honest in our work—when we are not doing our best. You cannot plead weakness or handicap for failure. The fact is, a large part of the failures on part of some boys and girls is due to downright laziness, an unwillingness to make an effort. When a student ceases to fight, ceases to try, you cannot do much for him except to endeavor to imbue him with self faith, and even that is impossible unless such a student will show some interest in himself. This kind of a student will drift along from one thing to another and be a “no body,” just because he does not face the right way. If you feel that you are down and out, and every thing about you looks black and discouraging, just try the experiment of facing the other way—toward hope and expectancy. Resolve with all the vigor you can muster that you are going to have an education. Keep at it persistently and take it from us that very soon things will appear more bright, hopeful and cheerful. Grit is the master key which unlocks all difficulties. No substitute for tenacity of purpose has ever been discovered. Nothing takes the place of clean grit. L,ook out for the period in your school life when you (Continued on page 4)
