St Angela Hall Academy - Veritas Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

Page 12 text:

3 A-REQADDQOO The White chalk glides across the smooth board while all eyes follow the formation of the letters, the words, the sentences. A quick erasure removes the mistake, and only a vague blur of white upon the black surface remains to accuse the offender. How can this be called a rehearsal for life, this momentary standing alone and unassisted at the blackboard with the eyes of teachers and fellow students Hxed frankly upon us? The parallel is easily drawn. Go to the board, Miss -ll The peremptory command will come to each of us in the form of personal responsibility in some job or career or undertaking which requires us to stand the test of public scrutiny. In the great performance of life We must all sooner or later stand alone before God and man, labori- ously spelling out our record upon the blackboard of mature endeavor. We shall make mistakesg instinctively we shall reach

Page 11 text:

8 Dust - and Stardust Shall I ever escape from the tyranny of that chalkdust? we used to say. It floated everywhere, it clung to navy blue serge, to leather satchels, to books, to dusky hair. Chalkdust was the bane of our high school existence, it followed us home, it stamped uswunmistakably as school girls. How we yearned to be free from its ubiquitous presence .... Now that the time has come to leave the blackboards of St. Angela far behind, we find that we do not want to be free from the powdery symbol of chalkdust. For mingled with the chalkdust, which we detested, was the stardust, which we loved. Each lesson at the board opened a new door to life -a new thought, a new dream, a new aspiration. Each stroke of the chalk as it shed its persistent dust shed, too, visions and hopes for the future which lies ahead of us. As we look back on the chalkdust of four years, we see with awe a pillar of cloud to lead us on to better things, in the work and the play, the bitter and the sweet, the facts and the fiction, that marked our high school black- boards, we can glimpse a promise of the greater blackboard of life that awaits the chalk of womanly achievement .... . St. Angela Hall Academy is forty years old this year. Forty years of chalkdust have spun around our school a halo of humble usefulness. In this our 1946 Veritas we pay tribute to each and every blackboard, and to each and every teacher who ever wielded an eraser. Students watched that chalk and wondered when their turn would come .... BLACKBOARDS is the theme of Veritas 1946.

Page 13 text:

A R,Cl1C2l1'S21l for GO TO THE BOARD, ANGEL! for the good old felt eraser, thinking for the moment that a sweep of the hand will remove all evidence. We shall soon learn that it is not so easy to hide our weaknesses from the omniscient gaze of the Eternal Onlooker, erasing them utterly from our record. And yet even in school We knew that, though perhaps in our unthinking way we did not face the fact so relentlessly as we must face it later on. God has been good to us, giving in every blackboard ordeal a tiny preview of the sterner obligations of life. We shall not forget the lesson-nor shall we lose sight of the great all- conquering power of His Grace. No, our mistakes will not discourage us. The blackboard of life must be filled. We must choose our chalk carefully, and fashion every stroke with loving attention ....