Article November 29, 1999 Issue

Dear Diary

PAMELA SPERRY THORNDIKE

WHEN I was a teenager I wrote in my diary often. At first it was just fun, but as I grew older, it became a way of unloading my problems. Recently, when asked to help a group of young people address some of the challenges facing them, I read my diary to see what I was thinking about at their age. I wondered if teenagers still kept diaries, so I searched the Internet and found a Web site called "Teenage Girl Diaries." The site is full of letters from girls who have written about things concerning them, especially relationships. Many of these entries sounded similar to the kinds of things I wrote in my diary years ago.

One thing missing in most of my entries, however, was answers to the questions I posed. I wrote primarily when I was troubled, and my entry would often end, "I don't know what to do."

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