The Second Mouse, a psychology student, had learned to categorize all aspects of human behavior and was qualified to counsel. But many of her judgments struck me as superficial and off-the-mark. While listening to one outlandish analysis after another of mutual friends and acquaintances, whose innocuous behavior she ascribed to twisted motives and deep-hidden Freudian urges. I kept in mind the fact that she herself had remained with an abusive husband for eight years. On top of it all, at 30 years of age, she was a veritable social cripple, self-conscious to the point of timidity, yet explosively angry whenever she did manage to summon up her feelings.

The Third Mouse, a government tutor, reminded me of a skilled doctor with cold hands. Unable to impart his higher knowledge in an even midly appealing way, he prefaced his answers to students questions with the statement, "Well, I think it's rather obvious." After a few intensely awkward discussions in which I tried and failed to get him to explain certain aspects of American government out of the distant realm of theory, I came to the conclusion that he probably hadn't yet done so himself.

The Three Blind Mice confirmed my suspicion that the ideologies and theories learned in college are of imperceptible value in dealing with people; and that formal education fails to prepare students to adjusty to day-to-day life. Rather, it becomes a programmatic attempt to help young people understand human actions after the fact. The classroom situation imposes certain restrictions (limited range of readings, limited time, one teacher's point of view) on the learning experience that are necessary to prevent chaos. In the end it is simply too safe and standardized an environment to teach a person about living.

I find the incongruity between ideology and real life especially disheartening when it distorts feminist thinking. As a model I was occasionally subjected to the criticisms and disdain of women who called themselves feminists. Once, while modeling on a talk show. I introduced myself during a filming break to one of the show's guests, a prominent feminist writer whose latest book I'd perused and brought along to be autographed. She glared at the furs and jewelry and heavy makeup I was wearing, asked my name as she took the book and, with pursed lips, scrawled. "To Maggie--in sisterhood," handing it back to me without so much as a glance or a thank you. Largely as a result of this disappointing encounter. I reasoned that there are two types of women who call themselves feminists: the ecumenical type, who believes in freedom of expression and the right of each woman to find dignity and fulfillment in whatever path she chooses: and the more prevalent knee-jerk feminist who is quick to condemn any woman who looks and lives differently from herself, and who is unwilling to make an effort to recognize the person behind the makeup and hairdo. This type of feminist has a close-minded and superficial approach which can border at times on censorship or, even worse, cattiness. She wants to see options for women opened up in one direction (business, law, medicine) but closed down in another (modeling, for example).

Ironically, during his visit Admiral Rickover provoked precisely the superficial ideological response he was urging us to discard. His flirtatious. George Burns manner offended a couple of female students who later griped that he saw women as only pretty faces. Had these two students bothered to look beyond his chauvinism, instead of merely reacting to it, they might have noticed that he was accompanied by a female attorney. This fact, given that the man was born in 1900 and was a ripe 20 before American women even acquired the vote, made him a somewhat progressive member of the pre-Virginia Slims generation. But, like the Three Blind Mice, close-minded and superficial feminists neither see nor understand the real human beings who surround them daily.

My best friend Liz, a model whom I met during my first month in New York, once said something which put everything into perspective for me from that moment on: "You go to the grave alone." A cliche, certainly. But said in the right way, at the right time, and by the right person, this meat-and-potatoes statement has since served as my best companion during times when I've been obsessed with the opinions of others or afraid to take a chance at something for fear of failure. The most useful insight of my life, which was also the most obvious, came from a 20-year-old girl who rarely read, whose chain smoking and social habits irritated me to exasperation, and whose chain smoking and social habits irritated me to exasperation, and whose malapropisms made Norm Crosby sound like Voltaire. And it came to me at a time when I was as far from the classroom as one can get. Han. a Crimson editor, is near a junior concentrating in American History and is affiliated with Dadley House. This article first appeared July 29.