You're behaving like a child, stealing from your parents because you think you're getting something for nothing. There is never a free lunch, and the fact that you felt the need to write to Cary about this means there is some semblance of a conscience there.

So STOP STEALING! It really is that simple. STOP IT!! And quit telling yourself you do it because you come from a dysfunctional family. We all come from dysfunctional families. Don't make excuses for your behavior.

You also need to replace the money. Maybe not all at once. It doesn't sound like you have the finances to do that. But whatever you were using the stolen money for, do without it and put the money back.

If you can't or won't stop stealing, you need to quit that job and seek employment where you can't steal so easily.

I assume you're over 18 years old. If you are caught and your employer decides to prosecute, that is PERMANENTLY on your record. There is no sealing of the records or expunging the offense as can sometimes be done with juveniles.

Grow up.

You need to see a psychiatrist and probably need counseling and medication. Your teen "angst" is severe, and it is not a stage you're going through.

You also don't mention any friends or family interaction -- deliberately absent in your description of your fake abdominal pain episode. There is an abnormal detachment from the real world in your narrative.

Either you're an older person writing a fake letter, or you are clinically depressed and also have some type of personality disorder. Assuming you are really 18 years old, it is imperative that you get medical AND psychiatric help.

LW, don't listen to jeebery_wonkers, who I will assume is a male, and probably white. Trust me, you didn't get there because of your female/minority status, but in spite of it. You are more than qualified to excel at the school and have every right to be there. Entitlement white boys can't stand the fact that they actually have to compete with more than themselves, and assuage their egos by thinking all non-whites are less qualified.

That said, that Ivy League school has to be in New England, which has 6 months of winter and 4 weeks of passably nice weather in July.

I suffered through 4 years in Boston, though not at such a young age. And it was one of the whitest places I had ever been (in terms of people), a SERIOUS culture shock if you come from Los Angeles.

I had NO history of depression, and had lived in a mid-Atlantic city before that, so I assumed I could deal with the bad weather, but as a native Los Angeles girl it got to be too much.

Thinking I was losing my mind, I related this to a friend who was from Boston, who casually remarked, "Oh EVERYBODY'S depressed in February. That's why we go to Florida."

Bingo! That realization put everything in perspective.

The weather really can make you depressed, and if just for a weekend you have to get out of there to go south to Virginia or further to remember the world is green. It doesn't even have to be warm, just away from the relentless gray.

Try like hell to make it through the school, because it does get better the second year, and you really need that totally different East Coast experience to broaden your mind. Perhaps you can withdraw from this semester, citing the depression as the reason, but go back.

The school is big, there are more students there than just the clique you are in. And if it's Harvard the surrounding area has dozens of colleges and universities full of people your age. You don't have to limit your world to the one campus.

I can't stress how important it is to make the contacts you have available to you, and you are only 6 hours from Europe. Take advantage of this opportunity.

I don't miss the place for a minute, and have only returned once, for work, but I must say the experience made me a hell of a lot emotionally stronger.

And do not underestimate the cachet that comes with an Ivy League degree.

"The big cultural difference between Southern California and New England is that Southern Californians seem to think it's supposed to come easy. To be fair, New Englanders seem a little too committed to making sure it doesn't, but the truth is still somewhere in the middle. The letter writer's getting a chance to learn this lesson early.

-- ECLamb65 "

Unfortunately, this is the perception of so many non-West Coasters, along with the myth that everyone out here is phony and plastic.

First of all, writers write, as others have stated in this letters thread. If you can't meet deadlines and write even when you don't want to, you should rethink that profession. But you are still young, and that ability to produce because you have to rather than because you want to can be developed with maturity and the need to pay the bills.

However, don't make the mistake that things will be easier or possibly less competitive because you are back in Los Angeles. LA is where the best paid but most competitive, most cutthroat and most ambitious of the writers gravitate because of the movie and television industry. Too many East Coasters and Midwesterners think they'll come here and blow everyone away because they think they have a superior work ethic. No. The work ethic is just as strong here, but at the end of the day we can relax at the beach or in the backyard because the weather is better.

The school workload and the dorm drama will also be the same wherever you are if it's a competitive major. The one advantage I think I took from the New England stint was that the academic politics there were so vicious that I didn't even notice the politics in Southern California for a few years.