Hurston describes herself as a student who always kept an inner privacy. She was something of a loner, and that inner loneliness may have been part of the baggage she carried with her when she left school, presumably to follow her mother's advice to "jump at de sun."
Hurston's first real job was far from the sun. She worked for about a year and a half as a maid to a performer in a traveling Gilbert and Sullivan company. When she left that job, she continued her education, first at the secondary school division of Morgan Academy in Baltimore (graduating in 1918), and later at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for five years. With limited employment opportunities, Hurston worked as a waitress and manicurist, barely supporting herself on the average income of twelve to fifteen dollars a week at Howard. However, in spite of the economic hardships, these were happy and challenging years for Hurston.
