Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing - Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 11 text:

In times of rapid change such as we are all experiencing, and will per- haps experience in the near future, I would urge you to be clear about your values, standards, and ideals. Know yourself, your strengths, your limita- tionsj be able to reach out and accept help to transform the latter into assets when possible. Continue to develop your judgment; to take calculated risks; to deal with uncertainty; to be constructive and to learn to challenge ef- fectively and to follow through Pursue learning and be as accountable to yourself as you are accountable to others. See the possibilities in the op- portunities around you and take advantage of them. You have such enormous potential and there exists a world much in need of women and men of compassion, wisdom, and integrity I’d like to close on this note, sharing with you a quotation from Erik Erickson about one ' s sense of integrity, a central part of our lives and of our destirQT, He has described it as an acceptance of the fact that one ' s life is one ' s own responsibility. It is a sense of comradeship with men and women of distant times and of different pursuits, who have created orders and objects and sayings conveying human dignity and love. Although aware of the relativity of all the various life styles that have given meaning to human striving, the possessor of integrity is reacfy to defend the dignity of hiw own life style against all physical and economic threats For he knows that, for him, all human dignity stands or falls with the one style of integrity of which he par- takes, Don ' t be afraid to stand alone and let your self-respect show through, I hope that you will exp srience great jcy and fulfilment through the boundless riches which life can offer Sincerely yours. 7

Page 13 text:

Someone called and wanted to know for whom I was living and I said myself and they said no, I mean for whom, and I said myself. Then someone called and wanted to know what I will be doing next year and I said I didn’t even know what I would be doing next second and they said no, I mean what do you want to be, and I said I am. Someone called and wanted to know if people who never had their names in newspapers were really alive and I said yes, and they said but how can that be, and I said great. And then someone called and wanted to know where I will go when I leave the earth and I said I can not leave, and they said figuratively speaking, and I said, figuratively speaking, I am the earth. Author Unknown