Give yourself a big pat on the back. You've made it; no matter how "crazy" or "stressed-out" your reading period and exam schedule has been, at 5:15 p.m. today, summer will officially begin.

Whether you choose to celebrate by packing, Grilling into the wee hours of the dawn, or running as fast as you can away from this scary, scary land, the whole school will join together in a collective sigh of relief. End of exams glee will be shared by the entire community, including and especially the dining hall workers, the custodians and the exam proctors.

But this collective feeling of liberation is one of the only things we have shared in the past month. For the sense of community that we tried to build during the semester has crumbled ever since we gave our professors one last hurrah, a smattering of polite applause or standing ovations after their last lectures.

Let's face it--I am pretty much out of luck. As a columnist dedicated to applauding the spirit of community service and activism pulsing through our campus, I have hit the off- season.

Harvard students' true Hobbesian nature has unabashedly emerged. It's an anarchic war of all against all. The war is played out at the Xerox machines of Lamont (The Spring 1997, Vol II, never seen it, wink, wink!), the sparse printing facilities in house computer labs (I brought that paper from my own room, damm it,) and in study group strife (if he doesn't send out his reading summaries over e-mail by midnight, tonight, I am going to send out my assailants).

What's more, common courtesy (not mowing down first-years in the last sprint to the reserve desk) and manners (letting mounds of dining hall food, trays and silverware decay at the foot of the entryway) seem to have been forgotten.

This rude, curt and genuinely self-absorbed behavior, all in the name of academic focus, reminds me of an appropriate adage from the Adams House tunnels, that keeps me in check on a daily basis:

"HURRY!. You've got to get there (they are counting on you)! Oh! The thought of what could happen if you don't get there in time (if you don't turn it in on time!) Don't do laundry! Don't hold the door for the guy behind you! Be rude! Leave the dining hall trays piled with the half-eaten food outside your door! Don't make eye contact! You are NOT trivial like they are! Because you are the CRUX! The LYNCHPIN that holds the universe together! You are a HARVARD student! And no person anywhere EVER has done anything approaching the vital importance of whatever you are doing NOW!!!"

Our current behavior seems to have been memorialized by our forebearers at this insane institution.