SUGGESTION FOR CONFERENCES.

Many courses of study in the College devote two hours a week to lectures, and a third hour to section meetings in which some test is given on the prescribed reading. Though this plan is, in itself, most excellent, as applied to courses in general it is open to one serious objection, which might easily be removed by some simple but uniform regulation. At present, a large majority of courses, especially in the Department of History and Political Science, devote the early part of the week to lectures and hold their conferences on Friday or Saturday. Thus a great many men have three or four of these tests, each involving perhaps 100 pages of reading, coming together at the end of the week. The undue congestion of study resulting vitiates the inherent usefulness of the system.

It is true that men are perhaps more likely to do work under the immediate pressure of a test than to come back from their Sunday rest prepared for an examination; but, on the other hand, reading done under pressure at the end of the week is not calculated to bring very satisfactory results. There is nothing, of course, to prevent anyone from laying out his work to suit himself, but experience proves that the majority of undergraduates are incapable of spreading it out judiciously, and leave everything until the last minute. Such an irregular method of work in any line of endeavor must necessarily prove unsatisfactory and inefficient.

The obvious remedy for this halting system of study is to secure a more even distribution of the work by scattering the conferences throughout the week; and in order that this rearrangement be uniform, it should be made under the supervision of the Recorder. This could hardly fail to improve the general level of the work, for it would mean the substitution of a constant pressure of study for the present alternating periods of idleness and congestion.