My dear,

7th January 1962, Sunday

Princeton

For example: suppose that when you are 20 or 21, you should discover that you want to participate in one of the many activities that will be open to young people in the federal or state government. The first thing they will want to know is what education and/or training you have had. Nowadays the minimum, absolute minimum requirement for hundreds of jobs is two years' college, either at a four-year-college or at a junior college.

I have been thinking about our conversation of last night, and I hope you have too.

1962, in some ways, is Wylie O'hara's Year of Decision. Some of the decisions you make this year will have an important bearing on decisions you may want to make several years hence.

For another example: you have said that you don't expect to marry before you are 23. Well, that is something you can't be sure of, but suppose you do wait till you're 23. Suppose your fianc¨-husband is a young man who is taking graduate work at some university -- law, medicine, the sciences, government work, etc.-- and you and he are living in the vicinity of his graduate school. You may want to do work on the college or the graduate school level yourself, but I assure you will not be very enthusiastic about it if you have to start as a freshman of 23.

I can tell you from my own experience how important it is to have a wife with whom to discuss one's work. My first wife was a Wellesley B. A. and a Columbia M. A. and a diplomat, I think they are called, at the Sorbonne. Your mother did not go to college, but she could have. Sister and your mother both graduated from good schools and took courses at Columbia and your mother even attended lectures at Oxford without having to enroll there. Both your mother and Sister loved to read and read a great deal, and Sister is multilingual. Both your mother and Sister disliked women's colleges, but they did not dislike higher learning. They formed their dislike of college-girl types thirty years ago. The type has almost vanished, because the kind of girl your mother and Sister were then would be applying for college today. Everybody goes to college.

Now I could go on at some length, but the point I am aiming at it this: I want you to think very, very seriously about what you are going to do after St. Tim's. You are not Miss Rich bitch. You are not going to be Miss Church mouse, either, but you must think in terms of being able to earn at least part of your own living. I don't think you are going to fall in love with a dumb head. I think a dumb head, rich or not, would bore the hell out of you. Therefore it is extremely likely that the kind of boy you will like and fall in love with is going to be one who uses his brains to earn his living. That almost automatically means that he will be taking either graduate work or special post-college training of some sort. And even if you have children right away, you will want to keep up with him intellectually.

Dad

Love,

Now this is what's on my mind: the tentative program you have outlined for yourself does not seem to me very "realistic" in 1962 and 1963 and so on. I am hopeful that you will redirect yourself toward a good college so that you will get those two minimum-requirement years on your record and then be able, three years from now, to qualify for jobs or continue working for a degree. You will not regret having those two years on your record, whereas you might easily regret not having them. As your father, I have a duty to point these things out to you. But once I have done that I have to leave the real decision up to you.