What was going on when I was born?

Fifteen years ago, a student at the Columbia Law School drafted a law that the state eventually used to gain control over 800,000 acres of New York's fresh-water wetlands. Environmentalists hailed the law, which ended development in the wetlands, as landmark legislation and saluted its author, Nicholas Robinson, as the savior of the wetlands. But these days Mr. Robinson, now general counsel of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, is under attack by environmentalists. They charge that he is supporting a program that is leading to the destruction of the wetlands - the bogs, marshes and swamps that filter much of the state's drinking water.

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said today that he believes the tax legislation the President proposes to Congress next year will be quite similar to the sweeping plan the Treasury Department presented last week. He said he had not heard any specific reaction to the plan from President Reagan. But when the Secretary was asked after a speech at the National Press Club whether it was merely a Treasury Department proposal or one the whole Reagan Administration was behind, he said: ''What do you think I am? I'm part of the Administration.'' The Treasury also published today a detailed analysis of its plan, providing the rationale for its recommendations to include such items as fringe benefits, prize money and graduate fellowships (which now go untaxed) as part of taxable income and to abolish such popular deductions as those for state and local taxes.

The Scouting column in Sports Pages on Friday misstated the number of players from Indiana University, Louisville and Notre Dame who started the season in the National Basketball Association. The number is seven from each school.

Before dying from stab wounds, a 23-year-old drama student told doctors and nurses who were trying to save her life that she made a mistake in resisting the man who robbed her and tried to rape her in her Upper West Side apartment building, police officials said yesterday. ''All this for $12,'' the victim, Caroline Isenberg, was quoted by the officials as having said shortly after she was stabbed nine times early Sunday. ''I should have given him the money. I should have let him do it. I should have given in.''

Two conservative Republican Senators warned today that they might vote against the deployment of 100 MX land-based missiles if President Reagan did not stop abiding by provisions of the 1979 strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union. Senators Steven D. Symms of Idaho and John P. East of North Carolina gave the warning in a letter to Mr. Reagan, which they made public. Congressional conservatives have been pressing the Administration to renounce arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union on the ground that Moscow has been charged with violating them. New Talks Set for January The issue is sensitive for the Administration because Mr. Reagan, who has accused the Russians of cheating, is seeking new arms- control accords with the Soviet Union. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko are to open arms-control talks early next month in Geneva.

''I feel like I got 10 years right now.'' - William J. Schroeder, artificial heart recipient. (C7:3.)

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1984 International Toxic gas killed at least 410 Indians , many as they slept, according to officials. The lethal gas leaked from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide in central India. At least 12,000 people were reported sickened in the city of Bhopal, 2,000 of them seriously enough to be hospitalized. The death toll was expected to rise as more bodies were found and the critically injured died. (Page A1, Column 6.) A warning on the MX missile was issued by two conservative Republican Senators - Steven D. Symms of Idaho and John P. East of North Carolina. They said they might vote against deployment of 100 of the land- based missiles if President Reagan did not stop abiding by provisions of the 1979 arms limitation agreement with Moscow. (A1:5.)

Toxic gas leaking from an American-owned insecticide plant in central India killed at least 410 people overnight, many as they slept, officials said today. At least 12,000 were reported injured in the disaster in the city of Bhopal, 2,000 of whom were hospitalized. The death toll in the city and its environs, 360 miles south of New Delhi, was expected to rise as more bodies were found and some of the critically injured died. United News of India put the death toll at 500, but the news agency's figure could not be independently confirmed.

THE moon is beckoning again. Twelve years after the last Apollo astronauts walked on its barren surface, scientists, astronauts, engineers and space agency officials are calling for a return to the scene of the American space program's early glories. They are talking of establishing observatories able to penetrate the mysteries of the universe with far more power than the space telescope to be launched in 1986. They are drafting routes for manned expeditions across wide stretches of the lunar landscape. They envision setting up permanent bases on the moon, not only to support such ventures but as stepping stones to more distant goals. Lunar bases could, for example, provide materials needed to build extraterrestrial colonies. By enriching the soil with nitrogen, lunar stations might be able to grow their own food.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1984 The Economy Government price supports for farmers would be cut sharply as part of an Administration plan to reduce Federal spending, Agriculture Secretary Block said. Farmers would be left more dependent on the market place in determining crop prices. Mr. Block also said he was likely to propose that the Government help farmers only when crop prices fall below 75 percent of the average open market price of the previous five years. (Page A1.) Secretary Regan said he expects the President's tax plan to be similar to the sweeping proposals the Treasury Department presented last week. (A1.) The Treasury released its proposed schedule for writing off plant and equipment, and the Treasury Secretary predicted it would please business because of what he described as its generosity. (D21.)

AN indication of what schoolchildren think of classical music is reflected in the attitude of a sixth grader in Cincinnati, who feels that such music ''means long notes that are slow, and quite frankly boring.'' This attitude seems widespread among students in elementary and secondary schools, most of whom have had little exposure to classical music. The youth in Cincinnati was one of almost 900 sixth graders and tenth graders in nine cities who participated in an informal survey of attitudes toward classical music conducted recently by the Association for Classical Music, a group based in New York City. ''It seems that kids are not given enough exposure to classical music to develop an opinion of it, much less to understand it,'' said Sylvia Craft, executive director of the association.

At the on-again, off-again Seabrook nuclear project, a shrunken crew of workers on frozen or reduced wages pushes doggedly forward on Seabrook 1, now more than four-fifths complete, often glancing at the adjacent skeleton of the all-but-abandoned Seabrook 2, which was to have provided them with work for years to come. The reactor building at Seabrook 2 is an unfinished, layered shell that looks like a full-sized cutaway model - a $1 billion investment reduced to a few million dollars' worth of scrap by its owners' changing finances. The same fate may await its still-struggling twin. ''This is a very delicate time right now,'' said Edward A. Brown, who is in charge of the project. ''We're dealing with regulators in five states, and 16 owners, and the financial community. We're talking to as many people as will listen, and that's where the battle is right now.''