Hilary to Kathy, January 25, 1972, Arlington, VA January 25, 1972
Dear Kathy-
As happens so often I started a letter to you last week but didn’t get far enough into it – My problem is in wanting to write long letters every time. I will have to revise my system because too often it doesn’t work!
I am so wise and knowing – I am always reading these GLAMOUR articles which describe my problem, analyze it and tell me how to solve it. I usually forget the nature of such articles within 2 hours but I’ve adopted mental mechanisms which are always analyzing (etc) my problems – just doing nothing. I start thinking about things like a psychiatrist. More annoying – I find myself doing it about other people. It’s not REALLY annoying because it makes sense to me and I enjoy it (all that insight CRAP!) but I’m sure my thoughts are all wrong. I will never know because I haven’t told anyone about it but you – I only hope you know what I am talking about.
Trying to write a story like the ones in Seventeen. 
Congratulations on your prize-winning essay! It was very good although I usually don’t enjoy essays. I appreciated the Doors quotation I’ve written a lot of themes for English this year – (on command) but they’ve all been bad. It’s hard for me to take a viewpoint and write on it in my own words. I also wrote a short story that I’m sure you’d hate – really bad conflict, plot – everything. I think I was trying to write a story like the ones you find in SEVENTEEN.
The President of the SCA – Henry G. – is resigning next week. Mainly for personal reasons. However, the SCA hasn’t done anything noteworthy since the beginning of the year. Nobody (including or rather especially me) really understood that the SCA is just an advisory committee – it has no power. Everybody had really good plans for reforms in the school but none of them have gone through the planning stages. We didn’t do all the traditional SCA busywork so nothing’s been done. The administration wants it to be a big service club in effect. Anyway, we’re going to review ideas for a structural change in the SCA and rewrite the constitution. So we have something to do the rest of the year. We’ve been writing other schools for information on their SCA’s – a lot of schools have already made drastic changes. We’re going to have an assembly to present in detail the ideas I’ve mentioned. I don’t know if anything will happen – I hope so because I’d like to work in the SCA next year maybe. It’s given me something to think about anyway!
I really want to get into a good college (nag, nag!) and it worries me a lot. I’m trying to read more than I would otherwise. You KNOW that reading isn’t big with me – not that I don’t enjoy it but it just never fits into my plans or something.
BLAH! Anyway, if I had read ¼ of what you’ve read I’d be quite pleased. Maybe my mind isn’t inquisitive enough. I think my intelligence comes from a quick mastery of the basics – I just don’t know how to work with what I’ve got – or SOMETHING like that.
OOPS – Now I’m making YOU read my stupid analizations. Lo siento mucho! Comprendez-vous? Ah well…[More....]
[Ah well, letters out of order, but who cares in the rush and tumble of decades past, eh? This one goes before this letter, for what it's worth.]
7:58:34 AM 
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