TALKING OF MICHELANGELO

To the Editors of the Crimson:

This past weekend I went to a party in one of the Harvard houses. The residents of the apartment were having the party as an experiment in personal interactions, but it turned out to be an intensive course in cocktail chatter. I was not aware of the social code that the other guest observed. The first step was to collect as many names as possible, and to address everyone by name each time he passed. The second step was to collect one piece of information about the person, but never anything that led to substantial conversation. The third step was to tell him how pleased you were to meet him, and that you hoped to see him again.

I found this very unsatisfying. My name for the night was MIT. My interesting fact was that I was a metallurgy major. This interesting fact always led to a brief apology from my interviewer for being a liberal arts major. In an attempt to redeem liberal arts, my interviewer told me the suspense-filled story of "The Tiger and the Lady." Then I was told that the story of the tiger and the lady had the impact or even substance of talking about X-ray analysis. I regret that the acute importance of cocktail chatter had to be shown to me in this way, but I laugh because the Harvard guest feels so threatened by my presence. LISA KLEIN   A Metallurgy major at MIT