In a misguided attempt to avoid cope with the prospect of finals, I found myself flipping through decades of old December Argus issues.  While I didn’t find any especially enlightening advice from past Wes generations on how to deal with the stress of Reading Week, I did find this gem of a column from December 6, 1977:

The writer begins by making an observation that is just as accurate today as it was 35 years ago—that conversations between acquaintances here always center on the same questions.  “How was your summer?” “What classes are you taking?” And so on and so forth.

The column quickly evolves into a rant on the “destructively self-indulgent” nature of one particular conversation-starter, one that always comes up around this time of the year: “How’s your work going?”

The conversation generated by this question has a certain quality of desperation about it which only serves to reinforce the already desperate atmosphere which characterizes Wesleyan in December…Furthermore, as with the other automatic questions that get asked here, reading week questions are boring! Do you actually remember even one out of the ten workloads you hear described? Do you remember who has it rough and who hasn’t? Do you care?

Well, do you? The next time you have an urge to complain about your workload, or to ask someone else about theirs, instead think about exchanging accounts of how many hours you’ve spent procrastinating. Or just lock yourself in Olin for a few hours, away from the rest of humanity, and waste time looking through old Argus issues.

Read the full column after the jump.