Watkins says she was friends with a gay Harvard man during her Radcliffe years who was also confined to the closet.

The two spent many hours talking about homosexuality, but never revealed their sexual orientations to other students.

Watkins also spent much of her time at Radcliffe extremely depressed.

“I was barely keeping my stomach above the floor,” Watkins says.

Being forced to hide this internal struggle for four years prevented Watkins from enjoying her Radcliffe education, she says.

“I found Radcliffe completely incomphrehensive and Harvard not very stimulating,” Watkins says.

While Watkins hopelessly struggled to feel comfortable in social situations at Radcliffe, she had no trouble excelling in class.

Gleason says she was immediately struck by Watkins’ intelligence, even as they were just moving into their double in Cabot House and figuring out who would have what bunk bed.

“My first impression was that she was a very sophisticated person from New York, and far more intellectual in every way than I was,” Gleason says.

Watkins says she always sat in the front row of the classroom and would sometimes take over teaching other students herself.

Despite her disdain for Radcliffe’s social environment, Watkins says she benefited intellectually from the academics.

“Even though I had those [negative] opinions, I think I was learning a lot from the professors,” she says. “I loved having all those very intelligent students around me.”

But what worked for Watkins in the classroom made her awkward in the social sphere of her peers.

“In social situations, I would just tell people all the things they didn’t know,” she says.

After graduating from Radcliffe, she began to pursue a doctorate in history at Harvard—and married a Harvard senior during her first year.