Foreword 



A CENTURY AGO, IN A SIMPLER AND SMALLER AMERICA, THE 



question of choosing a profession was, for a young man, 

 no agonizing decision. In the first place, professions were 

 relatively few — minister, lawyer, physician, teacher — there 

 were not many more choices. Then, too, if a young man 

 chose to go into business or journalism or farming, there 

 was no problem about professional training, for there were 

 no schools for such callings. Nor had the professions be- 

 come subdivided. If a teacher in a college had an interest 

 in science he might well be a professor of "Natural Phi- 

 losophy" and never have to decide whether he was a chem- 

 ist or a physicist, a geologist or a biologist, much less to 

 choose between such fields as astrophysics and biophysics. 

 Today the situation is far different, and there can be no 

 doubt that young people are having a harder and harder 

 time making up their minds about their future careers. 

 Parents tend to worry about this fact, and some of them 

 have confessed to me growing concern because their sons 

 had not reached firm vocational choices by the sophomore 

 year in college. The concern is understandable, but it is ill 

 founded, for, in general and with some limits, the later a 

 young man arrives at his decision, the less apt he is to 

 make a mistake. And a mistake may lead to a real waste 

 of time, effort, and money. 



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