“The End of Exams”

“The conclusion of final exams and the end of a school year bring into the vacuum they create a celebratory fervor akin to that felt by soldiers going off to war. One might expect quite the opposite: for the students have completed their onerous work and the warriors are only preparing to begin theirs. But the two situations have in common a sense of finality, a strong shared feeling that a chapter has been completed and that, after a hiatus of uncertainty, something very different will begin. In the former case, the pressure of the past is now released and, in the latter, the pressure of the anticipated future. With this fervor, the silver beer kegs came off their delivery trucks and lined up in orderly stacks in the club basements like so many powder kegs ready to discharge the static-electric frustration that had been building up in club members over the previous weeks. The rugby players in the rooms above the Holder staircase excitedly renewed the displays of their true seats of knowledge (for the presumed delectation of ascending coeds, Midwestern parents, and old-country grandmas) by pressing their buttocks against the leaded windows and shouting “Hey, take a look!” while pouring down beer on the passersby to gain their attention. Architecture students brought out skillfully designed kites to the field behind Dillon Gym in order to impress their girlfriends and celebrate the end of finals in a manner calculated to show the world how a dignified, aesthetic sort of man should let off steam. Though he lacked a girlfriend, it was in this field that one could see Holt Ariel, still wearing his ivy-green Robin Hood hat, running at a good clip, his blousy leg-of-mutton-sleeved shirt inflated by the breeze, staring up intently at a five-foot-long, purple-and-salmon box kite trailing a tail twice that long made of triangular cloths arranged in spectral colors.”