A Week Off

When the last Soc Sci 119 student surenders his bluebook to the proctors in Burr A this afternoon, the longest Fall term reading-exam period in living memory will be over. Everyone agrees that it has been fun. After Christmas some of us come to know our courses for the first time. Abstract catalogue titles suddenly turn into hard-headed realities of lecture notes and reading lists. The rest of us take a fresh look at what we have been doing since September, able to develop a critical overview once details are carefully mastered. January is a time for "putting courses together"--for discovering trends and relationships, for coaxing order out of natural chaos, for memorizing insights gleaned from prefaces and outside reading. Reading and exam periods can be the epitome--or even the entirety--of a Harvard education. It makes a noble theory.

But too much of a good thing makes Jack a dull, ulcer-ridden boy. After three weeks of concentrated intellectuality exams begin to seem anticlimatic. Dining halls fill up instantly at 12:00 and 5:30 with studiers looking for lowgrade oral satisfactions to break the tedium. In the spring escapists can lounge along the Charles; in January the only alternatives are to check into the Brattle or turn to gin, either dealt or sipped. If the University wants to indulge us, it ought to cut a week out of reading and exam periods and add it to intersession, when the relaxing is easy.