In the wake of completing her college degree from Smith School, Calkins set aside some opportunity to move around and travel with her family. When she returned, Wellesley offered her an instructing position. Notwithstanding, when Wellesley was looking for an experimental psychology teacher, they didn't have one and proposed to trail Calkins to fill the position. Not a solitary college in the region would take her as an understudy since she was a female. When she moved toward Harvard, everybody conceded to her enlistment with the exception of the president. Nonetheless, they worked out an arrangement that she was permitted to take classes yet not be enlisted.