Spring Fever

Class attendance goes down as the temperature goes up. It's a fact of life for many IU professors, and Monday's beautiful weather had the anticipated effect. The eighty-degree weather and cloudless sky kept many students out of the classroom. \n"Today's not an español kind of day," said freshman Robert Fekkes. "I don't care how many extra points they would give me."\nAll over campus, students took to grassy fields with blankets and books. Students at Teter Quad pulled a boom box outside and enjoyed music while they played a game of volleyball or Frisbee. \n"It's the next best thing to being at the beach," freshman Elizabeth Gist said. "It puts people in a better mood." \nSome students took the day off from class due to end-of-the-year pressure.\n"There's no clouds in the sky, and it is the perfect day to lounge around. And it's a Monday," freshman Rachel Roberts said. "Plus you just need to be outside and relax. Finals are coming up. We're already stressed out as it is. Teachers are throwing all this last minute stuff in our face, and sometimes we just want to come outside and have no cares in the world."\nAssociate professor of geology Jim Brophy said he sees a definite drop in attendance in his large lecture classes when the weather is nice.\n"It has an incredible effect; there's an inverse relationship between the mean annual temperature at noon on any given day and attendance in my class and most other classes," Brophy said. "I particularly see it in large lecture sessions."\nAttendance in Brophy's classes is normally 70 percent, he said, but Monday it was below 50 percent. \n"At the beginning of the semester when it was cold out, I was up in the seventies, but as the weather gets better, it dwindles off to the sixties or fifties," Brophy said. \nLow attendance is an obvious annoyance to professors, so some try to reward the students who make the extra effort to go to class.\n"When attendance gets low, I give the people who are here little rewards," Brophy said. "I'll tell them that a particular topic will be an essay question on the exam. I think that helps. I try and reward students for coming."\nThe weather has long been associated with changes in mood and behavior. Psychologists have long linked lack of sunlight as a major cause of Seasonal Affective Disorder, a type of depression most common in the winter. The symptoms often lift in the spring and summer. \nResearchers at the University of Massachusetts recently found that depression, anger, irritability and anxiety peak in winter, according to an article in Popular Psychology. The longer days and plentiful sunshine of early spring alleviate the "winter blahs." But some sufferers go too far in the other direction and begin to suffer from another disorder: spring fever.