Happy Birthday

Spring is born today in a brown envelope. Its birth will be punched into IBM cards, filed in University Hall, and notarized, with signature cards. The season will be baptized with a list of course numbers ending with b, and confirmed when the crews carry their shells down the long sloping ramps of the boathouses into the Charles.

The signs of spring are easy to find. Some are tangible, like the slush running into the catch basin at the foot of Plympton Street. Some lie in the substitution of a word; Bermuda replaces North Conway in the eager travel advertisements. Some germinate between the gray covers of a course catalogue; spring brings the Taxonomy of Flowering Plants (Biology 103) and Seepage and Ground Water Flow (Engineering 262b).

But the chief signs of spring are the plans. Spring brings plans for new courses, plans which are scrawled on buff study cards in February to mature in blue examination books in June. Spring brings plans for summer jobs, plans which are recorded in letters starting: "I am interested in obtaining . . ." Spring brings plans for commencement, plans which wind up in the neat hand-lettered Old English of a diploma, or the equally neat typescript of a letter from a dean. Spring brings plans for the drive to Wellesley along Route 16, plans which are never written down at all. Spring is a plan and a hope, a fresh start, a clean slate, a new lease on life. Spring is the season for dreaming.