(I couldn't tell any of them apart, for one thing.

I should have been interested in them, but I wasn't. Although I did take notice of the black trousers, which I found intriguingly chic-but only if the pockets didn't bulge.) And there were girls at Vassar who were bold academic explorers, destined to become doctors and lawyers long before many women did that sort of thing. There were political revolutionaries at Vassar that year wearing their serious black trousers and discussing their opinions on international foment, but I wasn't interested in international foment.

All different types of girls and cliques existed at the school, but none of them stirred my curiosity, nor did I see myself reflected in any of them. I'd never found my place at Vassar, although there were places to be found there. (I do remember that I was trying to master a 'reverse roll' that year-a hairstyling technique that, while infinitely important to me and also quite challenging, was not very Vassar.) Looking back on it now, I cannot fully recall what I'd been doing with my time during those many hours that I ought to have spent in class, but-knowing me-I suppose I was terribly preoccupied with my appearance. I was not quite as dumb as my grades made me look, but apparently it really doesn't help if you don't study. I had recently been excused from Vassar College, on account of never having attended classes and thereby failing every single one of my freshman exams. In the summer of 1940, when I was nineteen years old and an idiot, my parents sent me to live with my Aunt Peg, who owned a theater company in New York City.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert