Eyrie for Mark-Hawks

One of the best possible capsule descriptions of Harvard students is the one that says they are as varied as men can be. This otherwise applicable generalization breaks down sensationally twice a year, however, with the coming of exam time, when the actions of Harvard men are as rigidly conventionalized as those of a pulp story hero. Almost uniformly, they lash themselves into a delirium of anxiety, committing breaches of form by buttonholing complete strangers from their courses and asking their thoughts on possible test questions, and scuttling busily in and out of bookstores seeking condensations of course material or outlines on How To Study. Strangely, this itinerary carries them back and forth past Holyoke House, the building that houses a palliative for what ails many of them--the Bureau of Study Counsel.

You can't prove that by the 800 men who last term availed themselves of the Bureau's services; but it remains that most Harvard undergraduates think of the Bureau only as a haven for the probation-bound. The nervous ties, lost trips to Wellesley, and red-rimmed eyes that are a consequence of this misunderstanding are many and unnecessary. Unnecessary because the Bureau can quite demonstrably help the undergraduate to run through his average study problems like a hot knife through margarine. This fact is important because many men unknowingly employ hideously inept study methods, but achieve moderately good marks through huge outlays of study time. Such stumblers in the dark, as well as grade-hawks, may find it interesting that the marks of 8 out of 10 men rise after their exposure to Bureau methods, and that reading speeds are accelerated by 70 percent.

This fact makes somewhat more hopeful the College's situation of overwork and jangled nerves described recently by Dean Bender. Current employer and graduate school pressure for exceptional grades is causing all but the best study methods to buckle in the middle. Undergraduates who now find themselves developing blind staggers while jamming for finals will be doing the bright thing if, early in the summer of fall term, they check with the Bureau on just how much return they get on those many foot pounds of energy expended in the Reading Room.