In Partial Fulfillment

STEVENS STARED at his typewriter; nothing happened. This was fairly unusual, and even stranger since the last time he had been at a typewriter, he had written his entire thesis--92 pages--in 72 hours.

It had been difficult and boring trying to analyze the 1969 No-Knock Law during Christmas vacation, while foghorns wailed in the distance. He could hear the foghorns because he lived on the Rhode Island coast, a long way from the 1969 No-Knock Law.

The fall term in Cambridge had gone by quickly. It was some sort of indicator that Stevens found it more and more difficult to awaken each day in time for lunch. There was not a lot to get him out of bed. By the time undergraduates reach senior year, they either learn to circumvent the system or they are scholars. Stevens had one class per week; it met in the afternoon.

In a sense, writing a thesis was retribution for his life style. But once the job was begun, it proved unfortunately easy. Steven's older brother had written on the same subject and the pangs against borrowing some good research became weaker by the day.

He got a solid 30 pages done the first evening. Setting a schedule, Stevens cranked out one page every 15 minutes; four per hour; and managed 30 in seven hours with one break for a Schweppes and a walk out into the fog.

The next night was not so easy. Rephrasing the original paper (to avoid plagiarism) was more time-consuming than he expected. Whole sections were totally unsuited to the new topic. Since he had done no research in the three months of the fall term, he had no new material to add. The introduction ran over nine pages. It was a case of solid bull-slinging.

Four years at Harvard had taught him to do this extremely well. Someone once observed to Stevens that college was just an exercise in learning to pass off form as content. This observation had proven correct. Its proof came sophomore year in a tutorial with a senior professor (Steven's department was a small one). A five-page paper properly foot-noted with a perfectly indented bibliography was rewarded; where a classmate's similar paper, bereft of precision but original, was relegated to the B-minus doldrums.

During sophomore year, Stevens had begun to acquire the habits that were, ultimately, the source of his dissolution. The phrase "identity crisis" was invented to describe the impact of sophomore year on Harvard-Radcliffe students, who are suddenly exposed to all the possibilities for their life at college. Their choices become their outlets for the remaining three years.

Sophomore year had endings as well as beginnings. An idyllic love deteriorated for reasons Stevens would not even admit to himself. For the rest of his time, he stayed away from Cliffies; a decision constantly regretted but never reversed. One scar seemed enough.

Instead there was a round of parties and shows. Stevens had a certain talent in the theater, as a set-designer. He liked the people who worked on the shows; some of them had an admirable selflessness--especially the techies--rare in a world full of self-important nonentities. The rest of them were, of course, self-important nonentities.

As he used his art, he began to see the pervading idiocy of people seeking to be specialists in their own little worlds. Competition was anathema to students so recently from high schools in which they had been predominant. They were suddenly the small fish and didn't like it.

For a while, Stevens's activity served as a painkiller against the harshness around him. No one noticed the changes in him except for a friend or two left over from another time, who remembered a lost innocence worth saving.

Stevens discovered scotch at the Casablanca. Always prone to comfort in any form, he began to favor fits of laughter with acquaintances and morose drunkenness with friends. Dope was worse; it seemed to cost more and made him slightly nauseous.

WITH A pair of C's, scholarship began to wane. Three years later, he was putting together a thesis with no work, using triple-spacing and a 45-space line. He even counted the title page and table of contents when numbering. None of his eight footnotes referred to books; his was what is euphemistically called a speculative work.

What did the ensuing commencement mean? He had finished his thesis, in three days. It was given a cum by a department that suggested his performance on the generals could have been a little stronger. The last two years had been nothing but self-gratification mixed with profound depression.

He didn't know what the measure of his time had been. Perhaps the collection of show posters on his bedroom wall; or a dozen or so friends, most sharing and reinforcing the same bleak outlook. It certainly wasn't a triumph of learning, since Steven's welcome to the "society of educated men" was a contest won by default.

Steven's last months were spent in serious indulgence. The drive down to U.Va. (with a stop at Princeton, which he had never seen) was entertaining. It was also the first time he had driven outside of New England. Police cars have red lights instead of blue. His school friends noticed a definite change wrought by college; but they had changed too, so maybe it was all equal in the end.

What are you doing next year. The question is elided into five syllables. Grad school was the only answer; if not part of the triple crown (medicine-business-law), then at least time out, perhaps in England, to study set-design. After that, blank. Steven's brother was a lawyer, on the West Coast, forever regretting wasting his life in professional training.

The four years had granted a stay of execution from the inevitable suicidal confrontation with non-academia. Stevens's taste for indulgence was now a habit. He was incapable of coping with the demands of an unrelenting world. His ideology had become one of comfort; and he settled all questions in reference to it. It was easier than thinking.

When the thesis was handed in and he received his diploma, he was congratulated. His House Master seemed friendly at Commencement; his family, what was left of it and present, seemed pleased. It would have been ungracious to tell them the truth.