The College Years

So I graduated. Not only did I graduate, but I somehow managed to graduate third in my class. Oh well, I guess this confirms that I was a nerd. Personally, I never actually thought of myself as a nerd though - more of an independent thinker... Whatever the case, graduating third in my class and doing very well on my ACT actually got me a full merit scholarship to Wayne State University. Yeah, I know, it was Wayne State ... but, it was a full ride. All I needed to do was maintain a B average and pretty much all of my college was paid for. That was pretty sweet...

I decided to study electrical/computer engineering. Why? Well, I really don't know... Computers and math just always seemed interesting to me and I figured that engineers are pretty respected and well paid individuals. I was wrong about the 'respected' part, but I wouldn't find this out until it was way too late; however I must admit that being an engineer does pay a bit better than flipping burgers. Not to mention that it could give you an opportunity to basically get paid a bit too well by living in a foreign country - say Germany, perhaps... But I digress ... that's not until much later in the story.

I was going to Wayne State University to study engineering. My friend Eric (you remember Eric...) decided that it sounded like a good idea and decided to enroll himself. He was also going to study ECE and that way we would be able to help each other out when needed. I believe he even bought himself a physics book of some sort to get a bit of a head start on the studies through the summer. Yeah, this was a perfect plan.

Half way through the first semester, Eric had a change of heart and decided that engineering was just a bit too much for him to handle. Heck, I give the guy props for even trying; and I still believe that he could have done it if he really wanted to. Unfortunately the workload was more than he was willing to do and he decided to change his major to CSC (Computer Science). I was a bit bummed out as I had just then lost my shoulder to lean on and was now in the game alone. Oh well, often times in life things don't turn out exactly as you were expecting. This was one of those times...

I continued taking the required pre-engineering courses and met this guy in my chemistry class during my freshman second semester. His name was Otis (known as Psycho to most) and he asked me if I would be interested in stopping by his frat house some time. Now you've got to realize that I never even considered joining a fraternity - especially at W.S.U. Ya see, Wayne State has always been regarded as a commuter school. Nobody lived there - it was located right in the middle of Cass Corridor, a ghetto of Detroit. I mean the usual plan for attending Wayne State was to continue living with your parents and drive the 15-30 minute drive to class each day. The thought of joining a fraternity in this environment never even entered my mind. Not to mention, I pretty much despised the typical frat guy - they were almost always stupid jocks that apparently needed to pay dues in order to guarantee that they were always surrounded by other stupid jocks. No, the frat life wasn't cut out for me - or, at least, I wasn't cut out for the frat life. Here I was though ... darn near friendless and living a life of ritual routine ... taking classes that the 'normal' kids were doing their best to avoid. So I figured I needed to do something and decided to take Psycho up on his invitation.

The first night I stopped by the Theta Tau house I really didn't know what to expect. I was told that it was a professional engineering fraternity and that you needed to be currently enrolled in an engineering curriculum with at least a C grade point average. Was this place going to be a bunch of geeks? Was I a geek for deciding to even show up? To be honest I really didn't know what to expect and I thought that I was just stopping by to check the place out and visit with Psycho. I was a bit surprised when I drove up to the house...

Now bear in mind that we're talking Wayne State University here. Back in 1989 nobody actually lived there. I mean it was in the middle of a ghetto. Don't get me wrong, the campus was actually kept up very well, but walk two blocks away and you were in the slums. The Theta Tau house was located something like 6 city blocks east of the campus - surrounded by abandoned buildings, crack houses and a variety of bums, bag lady's and prostitutes. Mind you, these were not the same caliber of prostitutes that one finds in Amsterdam, these were the prostitutes that were often guest stars on the show C.O.P.S. The funniest thing about all this is that I would actually end up living in this house for five years. Now there's a situation that I never even considered finding myself in...

As I drove to the house that evening, I was taking in all the sights and considering that I may just have gone mad. What the hell was I - your typical suburbanite doofus - doing in this part of the neighborhood? Amazingly, that all changed when I got to the house and started to meet the people there. I mean these were some good guys. Every one of them welcomed me as a friend. They knew what it was like to be a freshman in college - they were all just recently through the same experience themselves. And these weren't the typical frat guys that I had been expecting. They weren't a bunch of mindless jocks trying to come up with the next big stupid thing to do. They were all engineering students. They also had a Coke machine on the second floor of the house stocked with beer. I mean that was pretty cool when you're 18 years old!

So I spent the evening with the guys and had a real good time. Little did I know that this was actually a 'rush' event. A few days later I received some mail at my parent's house informing me that I had been selected as a possible pledge for that semester and, if I so desired, I could join the pledge class to become a member. I decided to do it and I will still say that it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made.

This was where I was given the name 'Coriolis'. The guys just called me 'Cori' most of the time, but my actual pledge name is Coriolis. Coriolis, for those not in the know is defined as “a fictitious force acting upon objects in motion with respect to a un-inertial, uniformly rotating point of reference." It's basically what makes the water drain down the toilet in a counterclockwise swirl north of the equator and clockwise south. I was named after the toilet force - like I said, these were good guys... Now, if you're wondering about the 364 (from my username), it was my roll number after I got initiated.

Now I feel that I've basically given you the wrong idea about the Theta Tau brothers from what I have written thus far. Yes, we were all college students studying engineering; however, the main point to get from that is that we were all college students. I'm sure you've heard the expression "there's a time and place for everything ... and it's called college." I can tell you that we truly lived this. I mean yeah, we were all engineering students; but that only meant that we were a little bit better at figuring things out than the average student. Mix a bunch of guys like that together - all pretty much experiencing their first true taste of freedom - and just sit back and watch the show... I mean you've all seen Animal House, right? Minor leagues...

To give you a basic understanding of what I am talking about, there were two parties every year at Wayne State that were the 'must attend' bashes. One, the Wild Turkey Bash was held annually on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. The slogan was "It ain't Thanksgiving without a hangover..." The second was called The Atomic Beach Bash and it was held every year on the Friday either just before spring break or The Friday after spring break - I forget which one. Both of these parties were at the Theta Tau house. I mean for the Atomic Beach Bash, we would actually get three cubic yards of sand delivered to the house and completely cover the dance floor. Like I said, we were engineering students... To give you an idea of how popular these parties were, we would order up 20 kegs of beer for these parties and would always need to send out for reinforcements well before the 2am cut off time came around. The house was packed on these parties. Good times ... good times...

As I mentioned earlier, I actually moved into the frat house in the fall of 1989 when I was starting my sophomore year at college. I once again have my parents to thank for that. Not only were they willing to let me live in an area that most sane people wouldn't even want to walk through, they were even nice enough to pay my rent. I'm sure they're going to be reading this blog and I would just like to thank them now for giving me that opportunity. I learned far more about life by living in that frat house than I could ever learn at any school. Thanks.

I will admit that my grades did actually continue to drop while I was living at the frat house, but I was somehow able to keep the average above the required 3.0 B and was therefore able to keep the scholarship.

Man, there are just so many stories that I could write about during my college years but it would be way too much and I really don't want to bore you with the details... There are, however, a couple of people that I feel I must mention...

Unfortunately you are going to have to wait for the rest of this story as it is now approaching 9:30pm here in Braunschweig and I need to get something to eat and head on off to bed. Thanks again for reading my silly little stories. I don't really know how interesting this is for most people, but it has been great for me to even attempt to share some of my experiences with you.

bis später,

Coriolis