Springfield Trade High School - Beaver Yearbook (Springfield, MA)

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20 THE TRADE BEAVER Editorial By Don Case A few months after we have graduated from Trade School, shall we, the class of 1937, forget our school, or shall we always remember it? Let us go back and start from our first day in Trade School. On our first day in school we were much bewildered and amazed. These questions came to the minds of most of us; Where do we go? Will the work be hard? Can we make the grade, and do what is expected of us? What kind of teachers shall we have, and will they help us? As the days went on these questions were answered for us. We found out we could make the grade if we set our minds to the work. We believe that the teachers are the finest and the most understanding faculty in the city, and we are proud to have had them for our instructors. In our first year we spent a good part of our time getting accustomed to the surroundings and finding out what was expected of us. Before going any further we wish to thank the class of ‘‘36” and the instructors for their help in this task. As our second year began we realized we had quite an assignment cut out for us, and were kept pretty busy fulfilling these assignments. However, most of us found time to take part in some of the school activ- ities. If one did not there was no one to blame but himself. Our third year we spent in finishing up our work so that we should be eligible for employment in our trade and most of us were pretty proud of the task we had completed. As our three years grow toward the end we are sorry, for we now look back at the good times we had in Trade School and we are sorry to leave it. To the future graduating classes of our school we wish to say this. Please, in your three-year stay at Trade, try not to dishonor it in any way but, try to build up its name and reputation. We, the class of 1937, wish to say in parting that we hope, as Alumni of Trade School, to be of some assistance to our Alma Mater in later years.

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ete ls APCs Fete Tel Bib AS Vee KR 21 OPPORTUNITY Selected by Victor Mazzarella Youth complaining that opportunities open to earlier generations of young people are now closed, would feel abused if forced to face life as were the people of a few years ago. The boy, who thinks his chances for success in life are limited by the world he lives in has but a slight understanding how life really can be. He says to himself, “The young people of a century back had plains to explore, gold to seek, Indians to fight.” Those were the days, he thinks when a young man had a chance to make good on his own, without being one man of a hundred looking for the same job. Wishing will not take anyone back to that day—fortunately. Not many, even the most discouraged, would want to go back to that day even if they could. Still fewer would want to stay long if they did. What then, you may ask, were the opportunities of the pioneers? Hard Life—hard work—egrudging existence without comforts—sick- ness without medicines—young boys without a chance to be anything in life different from their fathers. Of course, men had opportunities then, they made opportunities! Perhaps the young people of our day would have the stuff in them to do as well, if they had to. But—who would want to? There is an aphorism that says, “Opportunity knocks but once.” Never to return to the same threshold again. The intention of this saying is to convey that once in any man’s life the chance appears for him to do something worthwhile—to rise above the crowd. The lesson is that the man who has the wit to avail himself of that chance goes to the top of the human heap, and the man who lets it slip through his fingers must live a futile life. It would be an unfortunate thing for the world if this were true— which it is not. If the opportunity to invent an electric light had come to Edison but once we would never have electric light. Edison was a failure many times before he was successful The Wright Brothers dragged opportunity back to their doors a thou- sand times before they got ONE airplane to fly. If Mergenthaler had quit the first time opportunity walked away from him these lines of words would not have been cast swiftly by the machine that he invented—but every letter and every word would have been set in place laboriously by hand. And if Gutenberg had ended his quest for printing after his first fail- ure, these lines would not have been printed at all. What a different world this would be if we had no printed words. Opportunity has worn her knuckles raw knocking at doors of men who had failed again and again. No, opportunity is not a shy maiden. You can be a failure and be in good company, provided you stay with those who learn from failure, and are willing to try again. You! are a failure when you remain licked. When one does succeed, he need not credit his success to what others may call the opportunity that came to him! And if he fails, all through life he may fool others—but not himself—by blaming opportunity for having knocked but once or not at all.