PKT25: Fall 1996
The Fall 1996 semester was my first semester of college. As previously mentioned, at the start of the semester the roster of the house was as follows (listed by year of college, roughly):
Seniors - Some of these may have been super seniors (aka, fifth year seniors)
Dave - From Michigan.
Darin - From the east side Cleveland suburbs. Hudson or Stow, I think.
Eli - Living outside of Ohio while on Co-op. From Oregon and Florida.
Glick - From St. Paul, Minnesota. Didn't live in the house.
Jeff - Not actually sure where Jeff was from.
Neal S. - Not actually sure where Neal was from.
Steve - From somewhere in Ohio.
Juniors
Bacher - From Parma, Ohio in the Cleveland suburbs.
Ducar - From St. Louis.
Joe - From Seven Hills, Ohio in the Cleveland suburbs.
Josh - From Boston.
Ralph - From Singapore.
Ron - From the Philadelphia area.
Zuck - From New Jersey near NYC, or thereabouts.
Sophomores
Davis - From the West Coast. California, somewhere, I think.
Dennis - From somewhere in the Cleveland suburbs, I think. He was basically inactive because he and his girlfriend had had a baby that year.
Phil - From Libertyville, Illinois in northern Chicagoland.
Tony - From somewhere in Ohio, not near Cleveland.
To this list we added seven pledges, listed with their Big Brothers.
Susan - Junior from Canton, OH. Electrical engineering major. BB: Josh.
Dolan - From the Pittsburgh suburbs. I'm not sure what he actually ended up majoring in, but some kind of engineering. BB: Ducar.
Frank - From Holland, Michigan. Computer science. BB: Davis.
Hsia - From New Mexico. Some combination of pre-med majors like Biology or Chemisty. BB: Dave.
K-Rob - From the Boston area. Started out as a physics major, added music somewhere along the way. I don't remember his BB.
Rowan - From the east side Cleveland suburbs. Business major, I think. BB: Ron.
And of course, Me, from Thompson, North Dakota. Computer science. Big Brother, Phil.
Frank, Dolan, K-Rob and myself all lived in Storrs dormitory, which would feature heavily in rush the next spring.
Since this was my pledge semester, and I have already talked about the pledge program at great length, I'm going to focus more on how I dealt with the transition to college, which would pretty much set up all the other semesters that followed.
On a personal level, I played football this semester and that ate up an enormous amount of time. I can say with no exaggeration whatsoever that Varsity Football, which was technically a physical education class, was the most difficult and time consuming class I took in college. At least I passed and lettered, which given my meager skills was pretty impressive even for a DIII team.
Whatever other free time I had outside of class was devoted to the fraternity. I didn't even work a student job this semester. This semester, and this semester only, my parents gave me a small allowance. Their stated reason was that they wanted me to have a semester to adjust to college without worrying about working. That was extremely nice of them. As a result, Fall 1996 was one of just two semesters in college where I didn't work 10-20 hours at a part-time job. The other exception was Spring 1999. That semester I had just returned from co-op and was comparatively flush, plus I was freeing up time to focus on being President.
A lot of the freshman at CWRU had never gotten a B in their life on anything, and a surprisingly high number of them cracked in one way or another when that first B (or C, or D, or F) showed up on their grades. Others cracked from the freedom of not living with their parents in interesting ways. There were a lot more kids who had never had a beer, or a girlfriend or boyfriend, or really run their own life than I ever would have expected based on my high school experience. A lot of those kids didn't make it to sophomore year at CWRU. Thankfully, while we had more than our fair share of bad grades in our pledge class, K-Rob, my roommate and pledge brother, was the only real mental breakdown from the group, and he made it back for sophomore year, barely.
As for me, I got that first B and was like "ok, good, got that out of the way." I really have no idea how I achieved that meager level of maturity, but I suspect it was a presumption my part that being one of the smartest kids in a small town in rural North Dakota probably didn't translate to being one of the smartest kids at a supposedly high ranking engineering-oriented university. It probably helped that my grades were actually pretty solid freshman year, with a mix of mostly A's and B's. It wasn't until the weed out classes of sophomore year that I started to really struggle.
Socially, I didn't have a lot in common with most of my football teammates beyond football, so I ended up spending a lot of time with the PhiKaps and a little time with other people in my dorm. In these very early days of email I only had a little contact with anyone from my extremely geographically distant high school, so I was more or less forced not to be one of those freshman who only talked with their friends from high school. I definitely spent too much time having an unhealthy relationship with a girl I'd dated in high school who'd moved to North Carolina when I moved to Ohio, which ended when I visited her for Thanksgiving and met her fiance (long story), but on balance the fall semester went pretty well for me academically and socially.
Physically was another story. Football is incredibly energy intensive, and on top of that I was walking far more than I ever had before. Just the walk from my dorm to the fraternity house was farther than the walk from my parents house to the building I went to school in from first grade through high school. Add in one or two walks to the main quad every day, and the miles accumulated quickly. The food in the dorms was quite nearly inedible to me, although stunningly the upperclassmen on campus said that the new vendor that had taken over this semester was miles better than the old one. I find that to be terrifying. I had no car to get to a grocery store, and I only had so much money to buy additional meals at the various restaurants on campus, mostly fast food joints. The end result was that I lost a lot of weight my first semester. When I went home for winter break, my mother was visibly stunned at how much weight I'd lost. I think I went to college at 185 and came home at 170, easily the lowest weight of my adult life. I still didn't have defined abs, alas.
I did mostly get enough sleep through exhaustion, despite having in K-Rob a roommate who seemed only to be awake at night. I definitely pulled a few all-nighters studying or getting caught up on work. I also played way too many video games. Based on who I was at the time and the near limitless supply of pirated games on the ultrafast CWRUNet, I'm not surprised I played all those video games, but I sure regret it now. There were so many cool free/cheap things to do on campus that I just didn't seek out because I was filling the time with video games. At least this was before most of the more interesting ways to waste time on the internet had been created, so it could have been a lot worse.
At the end of this semester, Eli came back from co-op. I don't remember exactly when Dennis finally stopped trying to be involved in the house, but it was either at the end of this semester or the end of the next one. Regardless, I saw him so rarely that I'm not sure I would have recognized him outside of the context of the house. We'll count Dennis and say we had 25 actives (17 actives + Eli returning from co-op + 7 newly initiated brothers) heading into the Spring 1997 semester.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program Bid Night, Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
SemestersFall 1996
Events Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings
Other Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU, Fraternity Offices, Part 1, Fraternity Offices, Part 2, Fraternity Offices, Part 3
Additional Commentary Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout
UPDATED: Fixed some of Eli's information.
UPDATED2: Added majors for my pledge class, to the extent I could remember it.
Seniors - Some of these may have been super seniors (aka, fifth year seniors)
Dave - From Michigan.
Darin - From the east side Cleveland suburbs. Hudson or Stow, I think.
Eli - Living outside of Ohio while on Co-op. From Oregon and Florida.
Glick - From St. Paul, Minnesota. Didn't live in the house.
Jeff - Not actually sure where Jeff was from.
Neal S. - Not actually sure where Neal was from.
Steve - From somewhere in Ohio.
Juniors
Bacher - From Parma, Ohio in the Cleveland suburbs.
Ducar - From St. Louis.
Joe - From Seven Hills, Ohio in the Cleveland suburbs.
Josh - From Boston.
Ralph - From Singapore.
Ron - From the Philadelphia area.
Zuck - From New Jersey near NYC, or thereabouts.
Sophomores
Davis - From the West Coast. California, somewhere, I think.
Dennis - From somewhere in the Cleveland suburbs, I think. He was basically inactive because he and his girlfriend had had a baby that year.
Phil - From Libertyville, Illinois in northern Chicagoland.
Tony - From somewhere in Ohio, not near Cleveland.
To this list we added seven pledges, listed with their Big Brothers.
Susan - Junior from Canton, OH. Electrical engineering major. BB: Josh.
Dolan - From the Pittsburgh suburbs. I'm not sure what he actually ended up majoring in, but some kind of engineering. BB: Ducar.
Frank - From Holland, Michigan. Computer science. BB: Davis.
Hsia - From New Mexico. Some combination of pre-med majors like Biology or Chemisty. BB: Dave.
K-Rob - From the Boston area. Started out as a physics major, added music somewhere along the way. I don't remember his BB.
Rowan - From the east side Cleveland suburbs. Business major, I think. BB: Ron.
And of course, Me, from Thompson, North Dakota. Computer science. Big Brother, Phil.
Frank, Dolan, K-Rob and myself all lived in Storrs dormitory, which would feature heavily in rush the next spring.
Since this was my pledge semester, and I have already talked about the pledge program at great length, I'm going to focus more on how I dealt with the transition to college, which would pretty much set up all the other semesters that followed.
On a personal level, I played football this semester and that ate up an enormous amount of time. I can say with no exaggeration whatsoever that Varsity Football, which was technically a physical education class, was the most difficult and time consuming class I took in college. At least I passed and lettered, which given my meager skills was pretty impressive even for a DIII team.
Whatever other free time I had outside of class was devoted to the fraternity. I didn't even work a student job this semester. This semester, and this semester only, my parents gave me a small allowance. Their stated reason was that they wanted me to have a semester to adjust to college without worrying about working. That was extremely nice of them. As a result, Fall 1996 was one of just two semesters in college where I didn't work 10-20 hours at a part-time job. The other exception was Spring 1999. That semester I had just returned from co-op and was comparatively flush, plus I was freeing up time to focus on being President.
A lot of the freshman at CWRU had never gotten a B in their life on anything, and a surprisingly high number of them cracked in one way or another when that first B (or C, or D, or F) showed up on their grades. Others cracked from the freedom of not living with their parents in interesting ways. There were a lot more kids who had never had a beer, or a girlfriend or boyfriend, or really run their own life than I ever would have expected based on my high school experience. A lot of those kids didn't make it to sophomore year at CWRU. Thankfully, while we had more than our fair share of bad grades in our pledge class, K-Rob, my roommate and pledge brother, was the only real mental breakdown from the group, and he made it back for sophomore year, barely.
As for me, I got that first B and was like "ok, good, got that out of the way." I really have no idea how I achieved that meager level of maturity, but I suspect it was a presumption my part that being one of the smartest kids in a small town in rural North Dakota probably didn't translate to being one of the smartest kids at a supposedly high ranking engineering-oriented university. It probably helped that my grades were actually pretty solid freshman year, with a mix of mostly A's and B's. It wasn't until the weed out classes of sophomore year that I started to really struggle.
Socially, I didn't have a lot in common with most of my football teammates beyond football, so I ended up spending a lot of time with the PhiKaps and a little time with other people in my dorm. In these very early days of email I only had a little contact with anyone from my extremely geographically distant high school, so I was more or less forced not to be one of those freshman who only talked with their friends from high school. I definitely spent too much time having an unhealthy relationship with a girl I'd dated in high school who'd moved to North Carolina when I moved to Ohio, which ended when I visited her for Thanksgiving and met her fiance (long story), but on balance the fall semester went pretty well for me academically and socially.
Physically was another story. Football is incredibly energy intensive, and on top of that I was walking far more than I ever had before. Just the walk from my dorm to the fraternity house was farther than the walk from my parents house to the building I went to school in from first grade through high school. Add in one or two walks to the main quad every day, and the miles accumulated quickly. The food in the dorms was quite nearly inedible to me, although stunningly the upperclassmen on campus said that the new vendor that had taken over this semester was miles better than the old one. I find that to be terrifying. I had no car to get to a grocery store, and I only had so much money to buy additional meals at the various restaurants on campus, mostly fast food joints. The end result was that I lost a lot of weight my first semester. When I went home for winter break, my mother was visibly stunned at how much weight I'd lost. I think I went to college at 185 and came home at 170, easily the lowest weight of my adult life. I still didn't have defined abs, alas.
I did mostly get enough sleep through exhaustion, despite having in K-Rob a roommate who seemed only to be awake at night. I definitely pulled a few all-nighters studying or getting caught up on work. I also played way too many video games. Based on who I was at the time and the near limitless supply of pirated games on the ultrafast CWRUNet, I'm not surprised I played all those video games, but I sure regret it now. There were so many cool free/cheap things to do on campus that I just didn't seek out because I was filling the time with video games. At least this was before most of the more interesting ways to waste time on the internet had been created, so it could have been a lot worse.
At the end of this semester, Eli came back from co-op. I don't remember exactly when Dennis finally stopped trying to be involved in the house, but it was either at the end of this semester or the end of the next one. Regardless, I saw him so rarely that I'm not sure I would have recognized him outside of the context of the house. We'll count Dennis and say we had 25 actives (17 actives + Eli returning from co-op + 7 newly initiated brothers) heading into the Spring 1997 semester.
The Ohio Alpha Beta Chapter of Phi Kappa Theta
The House Tour Outside,
Main Floor Bedrooms,
Main Floor Public Rooms,
Basement Public Areas,
Basement Private Areas,
2nd Floor Big Bedrooms,
2nd Floor Small Bedrooms,
3rd Floor First Hallway,
3rd Floor Second Hallway,
Attic & Errata,
House Tour Commentary: Joe & Laura & Astrid,
House Tour Commentary: Jackal,
House Tour Commentary: Susan,
House Tour Commentary: Assorted
The Pledge Program Bid Night, Schedule, Curriculum & Black Books, Big Brothers & Pledge Pins, Paddling, Initiation
SemestersFall 1996
Events Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings
Other Full Series, My Rush Experience, Chapter History, Family Trees, National, Greek Life at CWRU, Fraternity Offices, Part 1, Fraternity Offices, Part 2, Fraternity Offices, Part 3
Additional Commentary Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout
UPDATED: Fixed some of Eli's information.
UPDATED2: Added majors for my pledge class, to the extent I could remember it.