Kara's here. And I'm realizing something very elementary. Something I should've thought more about when I visited in Portland. Did you know, had we met in the natural way, (been introduced, shared a class, involved ourselves in the same after-school activities), it's very unlikely we would've developed anything resembling a friendship. We simply wouldn't have gotten along. I would've thought her rude and irritable and I would've been (at least superficially) correct. Now, you know it isn't like me to declare an idle opinion, at least not seriously. I'm more cautious than that. I trust my perceptions but I try to back them up with actual events. Why? Because my perceptions aren't always correct. (Remember the "sexist" at the driving school?) Like anyone else, my mood can influence my judgment. Taking that into account, I'm always willing to be proved wrong, or at least not entirely right. It's true that the man at the driving school disrespected me. But as you know, It didn't have anything to do with my being a woman. Wouldn't it have been convent if it had? I would've been perfectly validated in walking out of that place and never coming back. Sexism would've been a reasonable excuse to avoid a test I was afraid of taking.

Hi self-hatred. I hope we never meet again.

Just returned from soccer, and may I say, this has to be the worst I

How time consuming (and daunting) to jot down everything that happens in sequential order and explicit detail, but I

Stayed up all night tortured with guilt about english class. My other grades are in desperate need of some real work, but english is the pressing case. I think that

We're reading Frankenstien in class and I really relate to this Walton fellow.

Luke called from Anna

Greetings Ms. Greim,

I have received all of your application pieces except for the part most important to us: the essays.

It

Writing has become an extremely self-conscious exercise of late. Used to be a day couldn

I write this with the hope of recovering some confidence in myself, confidence that

I

Dan called earlier. Could I go camping, like we planned? I dashed upstairs to ask, and, making sure my voice was loud enough to carry to the phone receiver downstairs, asked mom if I could go (while avidly shaking my head.) She asked if there were chaperones. I replied in the negative. Her answer?

Saturday morning the group sets out to go camping in the Alaskan wilds.

But---do I want to go? The stress of being around Dan has increased tenfold since this morning, when he sat next to me instead of Lauren and Kale on the opposite side of the room. Sophomoric as it may sound I felt the battle lines being drawn, and the strength of his true loyalty was a lifeline, (though, perversely, I tried to hide how grateful I felt to the extent that I may

Finished running. Tonight

Mrs. Jokla kept me after class to talk about my