While the off-beat fun is what one remembers over the years rather than the erudition of the talks and the discussion, looking back on Congress and congresses, one forgets that the ideas we talked about, had thrust at us, listened to, sometimes absorbed or digested only slightly, these often new and sometimes startling concepts became more part of us than we thought at the time.

For instance, the key idea of this, the eighth congress, was New Zealand. Within that framework congreasers thought about what sort of character the average New Zealander joker was, did some little soul-searching on their own account, thought about religion, the university man, education, radio, economics and university politics all in the context of New Zealand.

They discovered, for instance, that they thought New Zealanders were easy going and sports loving, but university students were lazy and reserved. While it would not be wise to draw too many conclusions from such a strictly limited survey—even though it was conducted by Canterbury's psychology professor Dr. A. Crowther—it shows a trend in the thought of the sort of people who are prepared to come to the Cove each year who are more or less typical of the New Zealand university student.