April Showers, Life Sours

YESTERDAY in English, I sat in the back row and noticed that my classmates' clothes managed to touch on every color in the rainbow. Their apparel even covered a bunch of colors that usually get left out of rainbows. My eyes, when they happened to stray from the podium, caught flashes of robin's-egg-blues and dark browns, pinks and greens and yellows and ragg wool sweaters. Brights and darks and neons and dulls, splattered on everything from tank tops to overcoats.

What a joke April is. Nobody knows what to wear, and nobody knows what to think.

I'd like to love it, but can't find myself doing much more than liking it. And for a month that's the only exam-free month of spring, that's just not good enough.

It's not as if April has a great reputation in the world at large. If you asked your average man on the street for the first April phrase that came to mind, odds are he'd mumble something about April "showers", or about April being the cruellest month.

Two tags, neither of them pretty; rain and cruelty. Although there might be some who enjoy such things, I'm fond of neither. In fact, I got more than enough of both Monday morning when I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to slog through a session of house crew on the Charles in a steady, freezing drizzle.

FORGET the world at large. College students don't ask much of April--just that it be extraordinary, featuring a blossoming social life, spectacular weather and a relatively light course load. But as always, April crumps on its end of the deal. The month is just unfair--a reality we're not quite prepared to swallow--because the April we'd like to be living is the one we dreamed of in January.

It's not uncommon to spend four out of five potential January study hours pouring over the contents of the course catalogue, picking out an ideal spring schedule. A couple of friends and I worked out a system in which we only take Tuesday and Thursday classes--which grants us guaranteed four-day weekends and one-day "holidays" to break up each work week. All this effort was devoted to a future me who would--theoretically--lounge around campus all April long before final termpapers or last-minute cramming set in.

The weather would be warm. I would sleep in the sun. I would not have any work once my thesis was in. Even back in January I knew all of this would be a sure thing.

In reality, life has gone downhill since I turned in my thesis, and I hold April wholly responsible. First of all, it's amazing how much work can pile up when you totally ignore three courses for the sake of one project. And it's amazing how the thought of returning to Harvard in September to take a second shot at the Social Analysis requirement can resuscitate long-dormant study habits.

BUT what's worst about all this is the weather. It's so miserable most of the time that I'd rather be in a nice warm Gov Docs cubicle than sleeping on the banks of the Charles.

(Just a warning: perhaps the most annoying thing any wide-eyed underclassman can do is stare a senior in the face and say, "You must have absolutely nothing to do! Senior spring, chuckle, chuckle. How nice for you." Don't do it.)

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one solution to the problem of April. Graduation. April was never such a tease back in grade school, and I don't figure it will act up after I leave college.

Why? Because once upon a time spring was fun. After graduation I figure it will be fun once again. But in college, April--face it, May isn't spring, it's examination season--has to serve as both spring and summer for students, who disperse after finals to spend unreal summers with unreal companions.

Trying to cram the expectations of two full seasons into the space of one month just doesn't make it. Especially when that month is as cruel as April.