Harvard won't hurt her in the professional world either, she says, but it won't help all that much, either. People will look at her resume and assume she's intelligent because she goes here, she says, but it isn't really going to make her stand out. "What's going to make me different is how much I care--how much I'm willing to work for it."

Clearly, Alexandra is willing to invest much time and effort on her apparent calling. Last Monday, she went down to the Boston set for a costume fitting, and found that what she thought was a holiday was no such thing; because the filming was behind schedule, they had decided to go ahead. On her way home that evening, a three-car collision gave her a concussion, dislocated her shoulder and put her in Stillman for two days. On Saturday, she was back on the set despite the rain, with long sleeves covering her ace bandage.

The schizophrenia does take its toll in some ways, she says. Alexandra doesn't always feel either of her two worlds; "I'm very conscious that I don't fit into any group: I have a lot of friends, but not in any one area," she says. And occasionally she finds Harvard life very frustrating. "I have to hold myself back here," she says, "I want to get going with my career." But Alexandra considers herself an actress, above all, and prides herself on being able to play various roles with genuine feeling. She describes herself as "moody": sometimes, she says, she is the chic. New-York-elegant actress, sometimes she's the Harvard student in blue jeans who puts her friends at school ahead of her career. Through it all, however. Alexandra insists that she wants to be honest: "I want people to like me because of me because I'm a nice, warm, genuine person; or I want them to hate me because I'm not."

One of the less probable characters Alexandra has played--or rather, taken on whole-heartedly--is the role of the first female manager of the Harvard football team. But she says she's "not at all into women's lib. I like a little chauvinism," she says. "Opened doors, flowers--I like a man to be a man." Women, she says, can go as far as any male by using brains and energy, and the feminist movement denies many of the qualities she believes are essential to well, femininity.

Alexandra says she sees two types of people in the theater world, both professional and at Harvard. One group is made up of the people who are "really in it for show biz," she says--"all glitter, very interested in themselves, superficial." The second group--the people she'd like to emulate--see performing as a profession, and remain themselves off stage. Joanne Woodward has impressed her as such an actress, she says; an earthiness combined with depth and intelligence. "Those are the people I admire." She sounds a bit annoyed when she describes the same split in Harvard's theatrical circles, because she believes many of the people involved in theater here who have never done anything in the real world are "all glitter and talk--they think they'll have an easy time in drama because they went here."

These two different kinds of theater personalities are the subject of John Mankewiezc's screenplay, "All About Eve." Alexandra spent six months turning the screenplayinto a script for the stage--it started as a project for English 160--and now she hopes to see it performed this spring on the Loeb Mainstage if the Harvard Dramatic Club approves it.

While Alexandra appears basically confident that her effort to reach the stars will be successful--she says her agent now receives calls asking for her, so she doesn't have to audition as much as she once did--she is still slightly wary. Most of the money she earns now goes toward tuition and gifts for her family, she says, but she has bought herself a few things for the future--"things I'll want when I'm 35."

But at the moment, it seems unlikely that Alexandra will give up, at least for a while. "I want to shoot for the stars," she says, repeating a line she has said before. "I know it sounds corny, but it's how I feel."

I'm like a child who's set free at the fun fair--every ride invites me," Barbara Streisand sings in "A Star is Born." Alexandra smiles. "That song," she says, "is me."