HOUNDS OF APRIL

If spring fever be blamed upon the approach of April, so may the hour examinations. These more or less Jucid intervals of spasmodic scribbling follow closely upon the first bluebird and drift along until the new blades of grass anounce the deadline. At the present moment, any student carrying the normal, any student carrying the normal burden of courses probably has an hour examination or so both before and behind him, and several right under his feet.

They are certainly not of universal pleasure to either student or professor in fact, they are often snubbed by both. In the pupils' parlance, "they don't mean anything anyway", and it is not unusual to hear an instructor announce with studied weariness that "the rules and regulation of the University require me to set an hour examination". Such is the enthusiasm with which these March-ian April hours are commonly greeted.

Their kinship to their autumn cousins is evidently distant. It may be that the brisk fall air imbues the college with a love of system. It may also be that examinations in October fill a more substantial need than examinations in March. For the fall brings back to academic pursuits a host of men who have whiled away the summertime in physical exertion or passive vagabondage. Perhaps examinations in late October can tell whether or not they have returned in spirit as in person.

But in March there is no such virtuous excuse for cutting short general intellectual recuperation from mid-years or throwing the student again back upon his memory. It is true that then new courses are under way. Yet many of them are complementary to courses of the first half year; while the rest are merely new courses, not new modes of thought. There is no change as from summer to fail. And even were the April hours designed for some great need, they could hardly fill it while serving also as butts for general bad humor. What is half despised might well be cured or killed.