Women's Christian College
Cathedral P.O., Madras.
Nov. 17, 1927.Dear Miss Turner,
A Merry Christmas! It will be nearly Christmas time before you get this. I hope it will be a pleasant one for you.
I appreciated your letter much. It is very difficult to know what to do about a job. I did write to Dr. Young about the Univ. of Maine one just on a chance. I do know him from Woods Hole, am not too keen about him, but do not think he would be too bad to work under. However, I don't look for much in that direction.
And I'm still thrashing in my mind as to what I want & ought to try for. I am really trying to be honest with myself & trying to decide what kind of a job I can do best rather what kind I'd like to be able to do best. Frankly my teaching lately has been rotten & I know it. There are, of course, a variety of causes, the addition of Scripture teaching to preparation of three different zoo lectures & planning the Labs for both Invertebrate & Vertebrate is one fairly large one, & climate & set-backs of internals & fence [?] last term probably help, but a really good intellect on the second year would swing it. Q. E. D. I know my intellect is only mediocre.
What to do? Stick to teaching on a smaller job which doesn't entail full departmental responsibility & bone away or chuck teaching entirely & strike for a technical job which I may or may not be better fitted for? I think the former the more sporting (perhaps not the more sensible) so I think I'll stick to my ideal - physiology. My desire then is for a job in a small college with a chance to concentrate on physiology & I'd consent to lecturing in histology or assiting in the Lab for zoology, but I will not try to swing 3 or 4 different things. I can't. Then I shall work for the foundations I am lacking in Physics & Chem. looking forward someday to a Ph.D. maybe.
Failing to get that kind of a teaching job, then I should like to go for a technical job in a physiological laboratory. That would give me practical experience, & perhaps as much cash, to pursue the other later.
I can not afford a part time job next year. I must earn some more than a living wage & I should dislike accepting less than the $1900 I was getting before I left. I'm not keen to go South again - Greenville would not be bad however - but Dukes has claimed my friend Doc. Pearse. Nuff said!
If I felt the missionary call, I should not go to a foreign country but to the darkies in our South, but I'm a very poor missionary. I respect & admire them, many of them, but I don't want to be one.
For cabling any information address Williams - Discipula, Madras. I am planning now to spend the summer along the way in Europe which is poor for job getting but I fear if I don't take the opportunity I may not get another.
I did enjoy Kashmir - the Himalayas are stupendous. Those snow peaks & the trekking along the rushing glacial mountain streams "pep" me up just to think of them.
As for Eleanor & her physiology here, there's no reason why she shouldn't get it eventually. You see Eleanor in her
Dec. 1, 1927.
(my other paper is all gone)enthusiasm began planning without reckoning too closely. You see she rather hoped I would be so keen about the place that I'd be willing to take on the Zoo & leave the Physiology for you & it was if I would not do that that she suggested the alternative of dropping the zoo. entirely. Well, I do not feel I am the person for this place, somehow, & there isn't an old student who yet has the qualifications to fill it. So either a new extra person from England or America must come or Eleanor would have to be swinging both until someone could be properly trained here. That last is quite out of the question as a physical impossibility & the former would be expensive when they are rather cutting budgets than increasing.
But Eleanor has a few more years ahead of her & also has the courage of her convictions & has the approval of the staff in general as to the ultimate accomplishment. And in one more year Miss Commen who is studying in England in Chem. will be back & ready to start the B.A. Chem. which seems to me in the time for Eleanor to strike for her Physiology. It will come I'm sure & she'll have a chance to mould her own course without the precedent of the English method of about 50 years ago.
I do think the educational system here is altogether too much a transplanted one & not really adapted to the needs of India. I guess it is on the way of righting itself however since now the soft collar government jobs for which the system was originally planned to fit people are full & running over with University B.A.'s & Indians are beginning to realize the situation.
You bet they need some more ideas about hygiene, but they are so oblivious to the practical. However, that is an idle remark, because I have seen for myself how the outcastes [sic] clamored for serum injections against cholera & as Ghandi says the poor people are willing & anxious to take advantage of improvements. It's the satisfied wealthy people who want to go on as they have for centuries. Oh well, I criticize but what really discourages me is that I can't seem to do my own job the way it ought to be done!
What do you think of Eleanor's health? Her last letters have sounded much more cheerful & sane to me. Evidently she did well in her Biochem. which restored her self-confidence which was the best thing that could have happened. I feel for her there - mine is fast oozing. [sad face] But I manage to worry along & get excited once the idea of Christmas holidays & also over my trip home which begins to take shape.
More anon. It is a very busy life. Christmas presents & mail interrupted this letter to you & I am only sending out my last batch on this mail. A series of lectures, a staff play, & social work Christmas parties area few of the items on my mind, & Exams to correct!
A Happy New Year.
Much love,
D. Elizabeth.