In the fall, intent on becoming a doctor, Cather enrolled in The Latin School, Lincoln, Nebraska’s preparatory school for students who needed additional science, Latin, Greek, English, or math courses before admission to the university. She rented a small room (which she would later describe in minute detail in the Lincoln chapters of My Ántonia) and set to work. Her intense energy and concentration were a dramatic contrast to her parents and siblings, who had a southern, laid-back way about them.
In the spring, Ebenezer Hunt, her English professor, assigned the class a theme on Thomas Carlyle and was so impressed with Cather’s essay that he arranged for it to be published, without her knowledge, in the local daily newspaper, the Nebraska State Journal. The day it appeared, the undergraduate publication, the Hesperian, also published the essay. Basking in the praises of her professor and the editor of the newspaper, Cather decided to forego becoming a doctor. She would major in the humanities and write.
Enrolling at the University of Nebraska, Cather signed up for more Greek and Latin classes, Shakespeare, nineteenth-century writers, German, math, and chemistry. She began to write fiction, acted in plays, worked on the Hesperian, and eventually became its managing editor. To the paper, she contributed numerous short stories, editorials, and criticism. Her early work was crude and usually overwritten, and, in later years, well-meaning individuals would suggest that Cather publish it, but she refused to do so, believing that it had no scholarly value.
In the summer of 1893, a hot wind swept over the state, destroying the entire corn crop in three days. Banks failed and people lost their farms. Many families who owed money to Charles Cather, who earned his living by making loans, couldn’t pay and he had difficulty supporting his family. Willa’s two younger brothers, Roscoe and Douglass, went to work as teachers to help out.
That year, Willa began writing literary and dramatic criticism for the Nebraska State Journal at a dollar a column. She enjoyed her life as a newspaper columnist, but it was taxing. She would spend days at the university, evenings at the theater, and the rest of the night at the Journal, arriving home at one or two o’clock in the morning. Later, Cather wrote for the weekly Lincoln Courier. In time, she developed a distinctive writing style—“meat-ax criticism,” some called it—for it pulled no punches. If she didn’t like a play, she would say so and tell why in no uncertain terms.
Upon graduation in 1895, she was unable to find a full-time job and asked a friend’s father for help. When that hope faded, she returned to Red Cloud and continued to write, mostly short stories. The following year, she was offered the editorship of a new magazine, the Home Monthly, based in Pittsburgh. She accepted.
