What was going on when I was born?

In what will be one of the largest pension fund transfers, the New York State Teachers Retirement System has informed the Manufacturers Hanover Investment Corporation that over the next few months it plans to withdraw $1.9 billion of common stock assets currently under an advisory contract. The coming move, confirmed by a spokesman for the $12 billion teachers fund, follows five years of subpar performance in which the portion of the fund's common stock assets advised by the subsidiary of the big New York bank failed by a wide margin to perform as well as of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. To perform in line with the market, the system plans to invest most of the $1.9 billion in an internally administered index fund. Its portfolio is weighted and adjusted by computer to conform to the makeup of the S.& P. 500 index. The remainder of the $1.9 billion withdrawn will go to a new investment adviser to be named by year-end. The move to expand the amount of assets in the index fund to 50 percent of the system's $4.8 billion common stock portfolio and to diversify managers was based on a recommendation by an outside pension consulting firm, a spokesman said.

Some of the best-known fashion designers, including Georgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Norma Kamali and Hanae Mori, increasingly are emphasizing their own boutiques. They see this form of retailing as the best way to showcase their talents and bypass the vagaries of department store distribution and merchandising. Moreover, profits at boutiques can be more than twice as high as those from supplying goods to other retailers. ''This is truly the way to get out there in your own personal way,'' said Betsey Johnson, a designer of women's clothing. Her company, which grosses about $7 million annually, opened its third boutique three weeks ago about a half-block from Bloomingdale's, one of the more than 500 stores that carry her fashions.

A report Tuesday in the Briefing column of the Washington Talk page incorrectly reported the position formerly held by Stanley Sporkin at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was chief of its enforcement division.

George McGovern urged the Democrats to nominate Walter F. Mondale. Page B16. WASHINGTON, June 13 - When it comes to Vice-Presidential politics and the prospects for a unified Democratic Party, it is essential to understand that the Presidential campaign has entered a period when the behind- the-scenes negotiations of the campaign operatives become more important than the public performances of the candidates. In the public part of the campaign, this has been a period for marking time. Any citizen eager to know what is going on has had to make do with Gary Hart's speeches and the occasional press releases intended to keep the electorate up to date on thoughts that occurred to Walter F. Mondale on his vacation at Southampton, L.I.

Allen & Company Inc., the Wall Street investment house, entered the bidding for Conrail yesterday, saying it would submit an offer of $1.1 billion plus an undisclosed amount in warrants. The company said its bid to acquire the 85 percent of Conrail held by the Federal Government would be formally made before the Department of Transportation's deadline of next Monday. The remaining 15 percent of the stock is held by the railroad's employees. Two other offers for the railroad have been made so far. The Alleghany Corporation, an investment company, has offered $1 billion in cash and, to make the bid more attractive to the Government, has said it would forgo $1.2 billion in tax credits due the railroad. In addition, the Railway Labor Executives' Association, representing Conrail's unions, has made a bid that it values at about $2 billion.

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1984 Companies Allen & Company entered the bidding for Conrail, saying it would offer $1.1 billion plus warrants for 85 percent of the railroad. Alleghany and a group of Conrail unions have made competing bids, and Norfolk & Southern is considering making one before the Transportation Department's deadline on Monday. CSX, meanwhile, proposed that Conrail be sold in parts. (Page D1.) The state teachers retirement fund will withdraw $1.9 billion of common stock assets managed by the Manufacturers Hanover Investment Corporation. The large transfer was attributed to a weak investment performance. (D1.)

Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced guidelines to help control the costs of diagnoses. Page B28. DES MOINES - The first general reduction in health insurance rates since double-digit inflation took hold six years ago will go into effect in Iowa at the end of June. Experts say the reduction, a result of an innovative statewide plan, is setting a national pattern in combatting rising health costs. Under the plan, health insurance rates for 330,000 Iowans will go down 5 percent, a $24 million reduction that is getting close attention in Washington and around the country, where rate increases of 15 to 30 percent are still the rule.

Scientists today announced the first successful treatment to suppress or prevent recurring attacks of genital herpes in people infected with the fast-spreading, sexually transmitted disease. The scientists said that the new experimental treatment, involving daily oral doses of the drug acyclovir, could end the physical and emotional trauma experienced by the most severely affected herpes victims. The drug is manufactured by the Burroughs Wellcome Company, of Research Triangle Park, N.C., and sold under the brand name, Zovirax. The scientists also speculated that treatments with the drug might reduce the likelihood that herpes victims would spread the disease to their sexual partners, although that has not been proved.

Computers have once and for all changed not only the technology but also the look and tone of the office environment. Judging from many of the new pieces of furniture presented this week at Neocon, the National Exposition of Contract Furnishings, in the near future we can expect to see office workers as well as executives putting their feet up and their heads back, kneeling on chairs, relaxing their bodies to free their minds and trying to take the stress out of their day. Judging by the furniture shown this year at the prestigious exhibition of office furniture that ends tomorrow, the work environment of the future is designed for greater comfort and productivity and the new work ethic appears to be one of thoughtful relaxation. The apotheosis of the new direction is SunarHauserman's Jefferson chair by Niels Diffrient. ''I called it the Jefferson chair, after Thomas Jefferson,'' Mr. Diffrient said. ''At Monticello, he had a chair off his bedroom where he did all his writing. He put his feet up and pulled up a revolving work table. He realized that the more comfortable your body was the more energy you would have left for the thought process.''

When the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission voted Tuesday to reject plans for towers at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church and the New-York Historical Society, it was issuing a decisive verdict against the growing trend toward turning landmark buildings into profit-making real estate. Under its new chairman, Gene A. Norman, the commission stopped short of saying landmarks were sacrosanct, but it made clear that adding skyscrapers on top of or beside them was not the kind of alteration it wanted to see. Still, for all the certainty with which the commission turned down the two projects, the two proposed buildings are not the same, and neither is the way in which the commission dealt with them. The proposed St. Bartholomew's tower, an addition by the firm of Edward Durell Stone Associates to one of the city's most prominent landmarks on as conspicuous and valuable a piece of property as there is in midtown, would juxtapose a sleek and modern 59- story glass tower and an unusually sumptuous Byzantine church by Bertram Goodhue. Replacing the community house of the church on Park Avenue between 50th and 51 Streets, the tower would be a startling clash between old and new, and almost every civic group concerned with architecture and planning spoke up against the project.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared today that the rebellion by Sikh soldiers of the past few days was ''fully under control.'' No new desertions were reported. In addition to the statement by Mrs. Gandhi, who spoke to opposition leaders, the Government formally asserted that after the Indian Army operation against Sikh militants last week in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine, the rebellion had been moving ''toward full- scale insurgency.'' The army has said Sikhs seeking more autonomy for the northern state of Punjab, which has a large Sikh population, had been using the temple to store arms and harbor terrorists. 'Certain Foreign Powers' The purpose of the insurgency, the Government said today, was the creation of an independent Sikh state with ''the encouragement, connivance and assistance of certain foreign powers.'' A Government spokesman declined to say which foreign powers were meant.

An international spat is taking place on Capitol Hill among investment bankers from both sides of the Atlantic, the Treasury Department and the Netherlands Antilles as Congressional tax writers consider repeal of a 30 percent withholding tax on foreign investors. The jostling is not just across oceans but among factions on Wall Street as well. If the tax writers include the repeal in the larger tax bill now being shaped in a House-Senate conference, much of the business of issuing and selling American bonds to foreign investors could be done directly from New York. The business is now largely conducted through the Antilles and Europe, the circuitous route that American corporations use to nullify the impact of the tax for the foreign investors.