The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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ALBANY, N.Y.—All day yesterday the sessions went on in Albany. I listened for two days and became very much more intelligent than I have been before on the subject of vocational guidance, apprenticeship and finally the relationship of youth to the economic and social situation as a whole. Miss Flora Rose, Dean of the College of Home Economics said one thing which I will never forget. From her point of view the two most important things for youth, are economic security—a feeling that they may depend at least on a preparation for life, secondly, emotional security which as she explains means that all youth has to feel itself cherished.

I think this particular point is borne in on you most strongly when you visit orphanages or reform schools. I always have had the feeling in these institutions that in the eyes of the children you could sense the desire to belong to some one, to be necessary to some family or individual. In other words to be a part of the social order.

A conference such as this with its opportunities for talking with different people, leaves you stimulated with new thoughts and when I woke this morning to a beautiful day, I felt like saying: "I have spent two good days." May they bear fruit in thought and action during the coming months.

The weather is so glorious that I decided to have one more day in the open. Mrs. Scheider came up in my car to meet me and we cooked our lunch out doors and are having a free day.

I was not able to listen to my husband's speech last night because I was at a meeting of the conference, but early this morning while I was eating breakfast, the maid in the hotel who has been most attentive came in and reported to me on what he had said, and how it had sounded over the radio. I thought she was very kind and considerate, because she knew I would like to know her impressions.

I have been reading Carl Van Doren's: "Three Worlds." I delighted in his appreciation of Eleanor Wiley, and I think I was particularly impressed with the last part of the book. One little phrase, because it fits in with my own experience so well will always stay in my mind. The gist of it is this, that he tried to sit down and think a situation out and found that all he could do was to live it out. In my own experience I have found over and over again that so many things are impossible to determine through thought alone because it is only as they develop that you are able by doing to meet the situation and know what should be done.

E.R.


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, October 3, 1936

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a draft version of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. My Day column draft dated October 2, 1936, FDR Library, Hyde Park, NY
TMsd, 2 October 1936, AERP, FDRL