leta's professional career began as a teacher at two high schools in nebraska. the first of these was in dewitt, nebraska, harry hollingworth's hometown. she was the assistant principal of the high school for one year. her second teaching position was in the town of mccook. this position lasted for two years. she flourished at these jobs until she moved to new york where her fiancé was finishing up his doctorate under cattell. when he obtained an assistant professorship at barnard college, harry was able to afford to move leta to new york with him. they were married on december 31, 1908. leta hollingworth intended on teaching in new york, but soon discovered that the city had a policy stating that married women were not allowed to teach. she continued writing and busied herself with housework, yet this proved to be unrewarding and she found herself bored, frustrated, and began to develop depression. it was difficult to bear the fact that, despite her training, she was unable to contribute financially. she tried to go on to graduate school but was barred due to gender discrimination at the time. she began to question the role society expected of women and the inequality of women's opportunities. as a result, her career interests changed to education and sociology. in 1911 she was able to begin graduate school thanks to a research grant her husband received from coca-cola. in 1913 she received her master's degree in education at columbia and began working for the clearing house for mental defectives to administer binet intelligence tests in 1914. quickly she became the top scorer and new york city's first civil service psychologist while filling a post at bellevue hospital as chief of the psychological lab. hollingworth continued on her academic journey to study educational psychology under the supervision of edward l. thorndike.