March 28, 1935.
Dear Miss Turner,
It is a 20 minute gap in my life & I'll use it for a note to you. Did I write you about Dr. Clapp. I saw it in Science and thought "I'll write Miss Turner." This teaching business needs plenty of inspiration in the background. I get a bit discouraged and wonder if you ever meditate on the black sheep in a class instead of seeing the group with all its white lambs included. Maybe there are two bright spots in nearly every class, but I get woebegone at the don't care ness. Yesterday I rose in wrath and laid down the law - but that isn't the way to win people to enthusiasm. When you are working with minds that do not leap, you can't close chasms. How many individuals in a class of 20 do you find able to think a thought? And another thing, when teacher gets skeptical as to the students' power, is it time to quit all efforts?
This first year course in anatomy & physiology, is such a burden to the class. Only sometimes a year or more later when the professor begins on Atrapine & the parasympathetics in pharmacology class, here & there a student looks around at me with a comprehending glance. I suppose they learn something, a few of them.
Yesterday, going over marks, Laddie asked me if the course was too hard. What on earth is the answer to that?
Tell me, what physiology text is best for me to get these days. I have an English one, Wright's Applied Physiology, but no American one of my own. How about Halliburton. Only that happens to be English doesn't it?
I'll continue the struggle from this point.
Reading over the Quarterly about Miss Stevens I am more than ever aware of the fuzziness of my work in senior English courses in this business here. Troubled about it but not distressed enough to get busy and clean up the lines.
Do come to Beirut.
I'll be in Scotland from July 7 or 9 or 10 to August 10 - 12 -14. When will you be? there. Can't we meet somewhere for a minute. I can't make Edessa.
I may have Ellen Lyman - aged 13 - in Beirut for next year. She is like a young sister & enough like me to profit by a year living with me. She may avoid traits & tricks thus revealed. She'll be a good companion. I should love it.
I'm going on a head measuring expedition to the desert April 17 for a week, between Hama and Palmyra, maybe as far as the latter.
Love as ever
Katy