PKT25: Fall 1997
The summer of 1997 was the last summer I lived at home. I spent those months working a temp job doing flood cleanup in the aftermath of the 97 flood. I worked out, I read, and I didn't do much of anything else.
We had done room draw for the fall at the end of the semester, and I was planning to live with Kip in the The Ballroom. Because my parents didn't have internet back then, I was completely cut off from news about the fraternity. As such, I didn't learn that Kip had decided to switch schools until I came back in August. Actually, I"m not sure I learned about it so much as he never turned up. We redid room draw, and I ended up living in the back of the Studio with Hsia in the front room.
Kip wasn't our only membership loss. Beyond the six seniors who graduated and departed, his pledge brother Ravi also disappeared. Presumably he had transferred elsewhere, although if I ever learned exactly what happened to him, I have since forgotten. We started the semester out at 22 actives. 21 of us were living in the house; Mike lived in the dorms for the fall semester before deciding to move in over winter break.
In the fall semester I was both Secretary and House Manager. I don't recall why I ran for Secretary, beyond possibly "wanting to contribute", but I ran for House Manager because the House Manager didn't have to clean, they just had to make sure everybody else cleaned. Given that seniority impacted the work sessions you drew for the semester and as an incoming sophomore I had almost no seniority, there was a large chance that I would be cleaning a bathroom or dealing with trash regularly. I hate cleaning bathrooms (more specifically, tubs and showers), so I opted to run for House Manager largely to bypass that.
Being House Manager ended up being a major source of stress for me. This was probably the first semester that I realized that I cared a lot more than most people about doing a good job. It took me many, many years to come to terms with this (assuming I actually have), and people's indifference to doing very basic things made me very, very angry throughout both semesters as House Manager and indeed throughout college. I picked up "The Cynic" nickname this semester, because I quickly and vocally became cynical about people actually doing what they said they would do.
Of course, stress is relative. Any stress I had due to being House Manager was dwarfed by the stress of classes. My grades had been pretty strong in my freshman year. I had to maintain a 3.4 to keep my scholarship, but was allowed to drop one class per semester from the calculations. I made it pretty easily, only to find that the school had decided to change it completely and just require a flat 3.0 in all classes to maintain the scholarship. I made that even more easily, but sophomore year was the infamous weed out year. For the first time I took a bunch of classes that were far beyond anything I had taken in high school, and the difficulty level was much higher. I withdrew from classes for the first time. I bombed tests for the first time. I believe this was the semester that I started a gigantic multiple semester streak of failing every single test I had in one of the classes for my major. Fortunately, I actually could do the programming and that usually kept me from failing the class outright, but there's a large gap between failing and 3.0. My classes for my English minor helped keep me afloat, barely, but I was extremely stresses about my scholarship my entire sophomore year. I developed a nervous twitch at one point, which was fun.
I also had some job stress. The cushy data entry gig I'd had in the spring semester was gone because the brother I'd handed it to, K-Rob, had simply stopped going. I actually found a higher paying gig doing desktop technical support for the management school. In these early days of the desktop computer revolution, there were still a LOT of people who didn't really know how computers worked. Let's just say the management school lived up to its reputation. A whole bunch of semi-archetypal tech support stories actually happened to me, and since this was long before affordable remote access software existed, I had to walk throughout the building to find and diagnose out the terrible things people had done to their computers.
Rush didn't go super well either. We ended up initiating three brothers in the fall 1997 semester.
Pat - A sophomore computer science major from Virginia. Pat had actually been Kip's roommate freshman year in Storrs, which means that he was in the same quad as me and K-Rob. BB: Me.
Todd - I remember very little about Todd. I feel like he was a sophomore from Ohio, but that's as far as I can recall. BB: Adam.
Jackal - A freshman music education major from Long Island. Jackal was derived from his last name. Also called Dave Cello, because he played the cello, and we apparently had no imagination. BB: Phil.
Reading this, it sure seems like the entire semester was a dumpster fire. That was absolutely not true. Among the many positive things that happened in the fall:
- I spent a ton of time hanging out in Eli's room reading comics. He turned me on to comics in general (I never really read them as a kid) and Preacher in particular.
- I saw Rusted Root, which really kicked off me being a concert person. A few days later, I went to see Parliament-Funkadelic with Zuck and Jon on (or at least close to) Halloween** at Playhouse Square and came away with what is still to this day the strongest contact buzz I have ever had. George Clinton, Bootsy and company were all in costumes, which made it all even more surreal.
- I didn't do any dating (unless you count getting shot down a lot, which looking back is totally fair given my emotional state at the time), but AZD sorority spent most of my sophomore year hanging out at our house so there were always girls around. Also, it's worth noting that during finals of the spring semester Davis had helped me shave my head down to the skin, and while I kept it through graduation mostly for ease of care, my sister was convinced it was super unattractive. YMMV.
- I played a lot of video games. Goldeneye came out in August 97, and it would be hard to overstate how much virtually everybody in the house played Goldeneye for the next four years. It may have even surpassed Mario Kart for sheer hours played.
At the end of the semester, Eli graduated. He promptly got a job working at a Cleveland-area software company. Four years later he helped me get a job there too. He was assigned as my mentor, and we experienced many wacky hijinks together until he left the company in 2007 just shy of his ten year anniversary. I'm coming up on my twenty year anniversary there in a few months.
Between the three new brothers. Eli's graduation and Ravi and Kipton's disappearance, we ended the semester at the same 22 actives we'd had at the start. Mike moved in at the end of the semester, as did Patrick and I think Todd. Jackal, as a freshman, could not.
**The incomplete all-time list of P-Funk shows does not show a Cleveland Halloween show for 1997 and my lists don't go that far back. I'm 100% sure it was Fall 1997, but less sure about it being on Halloween.
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
Semesters
Fall 1996, Spring 1997, Fall 1997
Events
Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings, Serenading
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, Demographics
Additional Commentary
Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout
We had done room draw for the fall at the end of the semester, and I was planning to live with Kip in the The Ballroom. Because my parents didn't have internet back then, I was completely cut off from news about the fraternity. As such, I didn't learn that Kip had decided to switch schools until I came back in August. Actually, I"m not sure I learned about it so much as he never turned up. We redid room draw, and I ended up living in the back of the Studio with Hsia in the front room.
Kip wasn't our only membership loss. Beyond the six seniors who graduated and departed, his pledge brother Ravi also disappeared. Presumably he had transferred elsewhere, although if I ever learned exactly what happened to him, I have since forgotten. We started the semester out at 22 actives. 21 of us were living in the house; Mike lived in the dorms for the fall semester before deciding to move in over winter break.
In the fall semester I was both Secretary and House Manager. I don't recall why I ran for Secretary, beyond possibly "wanting to contribute", but I ran for House Manager because the House Manager didn't have to clean, they just had to make sure everybody else cleaned. Given that seniority impacted the work sessions you drew for the semester and as an incoming sophomore I had almost no seniority, there was a large chance that I would be cleaning a bathroom or dealing with trash regularly. I hate cleaning bathrooms (more specifically, tubs and showers), so I opted to run for House Manager largely to bypass that.
Being House Manager ended up being a major source of stress for me. This was probably the first semester that I realized that I cared a lot more than most people about doing a good job. It took me many, many years to come to terms with this (assuming I actually have), and people's indifference to doing very basic things made me very, very angry throughout both semesters as House Manager and indeed throughout college. I picked up "The Cynic" nickname this semester, because I quickly and vocally became cynical about people actually doing what they said they would do.
Of course, stress is relative. Any stress I had due to being House Manager was dwarfed by the stress of classes. My grades had been pretty strong in my freshman year. I had to maintain a 3.4 to keep my scholarship, but was allowed to drop one class per semester from the calculations. I made it pretty easily, only to find that the school had decided to change it completely and just require a flat 3.0 in all classes to maintain the scholarship. I made that even more easily, but sophomore year was the infamous weed out year. For the first time I took a bunch of classes that were far beyond anything I had taken in high school, and the difficulty level was much higher. I withdrew from classes for the first time. I bombed tests for the first time. I believe this was the semester that I started a gigantic multiple semester streak of failing every single test I had in one of the classes for my major. Fortunately, I actually could do the programming and that usually kept me from failing the class outright, but there's a large gap between failing and 3.0. My classes for my English minor helped keep me afloat, barely, but I was extremely stresses about my scholarship my entire sophomore year. I developed a nervous twitch at one point, which was fun.
I also had some job stress. The cushy data entry gig I'd had in the spring semester was gone because the brother I'd handed it to, K-Rob, had simply stopped going. I actually found a higher paying gig doing desktop technical support for the management school. In these early days of the desktop computer revolution, there were still a LOT of people who didn't really know how computers worked. Let's just say the management school lived up to its reputation. A whole bunch of semi-archetypal tech support stories actually happened to me, and since this was long before affordable remote access software existed, I had to walk throughout the building to find and diagnose out the terrible things people had done to their computers.
Rush didn't go super well either. We ended up initiating three brothers in the fall 1997 semester.
Pat - A sophomore computer science major from Virginia. Pat had actually been Kip's roommate freshman year in Storrs, which means that he was in the same quad as me and K-Rob. BB: Me.
Todd - I remember very little about Todd. I feel like he was a sophomore from Ohio, but that's as far as I can recall. BB: Adam.
Jackal - A freshman music education major from Long Island. Jackal was derived from his last name. Also called Dave Cello, because he played the cello, and we apparently had no imagination. BB: Phil.
Reading this, it sure seems like the entire semester was a dumpster fire. That was absolutely not true. Among the many positive things that happened in the fall:
- I spent a ton of time hanging out in Eli's room reading comics. He turned me on to comics in general (I never really read them as a kid) and Preacher in particular.
- I saw Rusted Root, which really kicked off me being a concert person. A few days later, I went to see Parliament-Funkadelic with Zuck and Jon on (or at least close to) Halloween** at Playhouse Square and came away with what is still to this day the strongest contact buzz I have ever had. George Clinton, Bootsy and company were all in costumes, which made it all even more surreal.
- I didn't do any dating (unless you count getting shot down a lot, which looking back is totally fair given my emotional state at the time), but AZD sorority spent most of my sophomore year hanging out at our house so there were always girls around. Also, it's worth noting that during finals of the spring semester Davis had helped me shave my head down to the skin, and while I kept it through graduation mostly for ease of care, my sister was convinced it was super unattractive. YMMV.
- I played a lot of video games. Goldeneye came out in August 97, and it would be hard to overstate how much virtually everybody in the house played Goldeneye for the next four years. It may have even surpassed Mario Kart for sheer hours played.
At the end of the semester, Eli graduated. He promptly got a job working at a Cleveland-area software company. Four years later he helped me get a job there too. He was assigned as my mentor, and we experienced many wacky hijinks together until he left the company in 2007 just shy of his ten year anniversary. I'm coming up on my twenty year anniversary there in a few months.
Between the three new brothers. Eli's graduation and Ravi and Kipton's disappearance, we ended the semester at the same 22 actives we'd had at the start. Mike moved in at the end of the semester, as did Patrick and I think Todd. Jackal, as a freshman, could not.
**The incomplete all-time list of P-Funk shows does not show a Cleveland Halloween show for 1997 and my lists don't go that far back. I'm 100% sure it was Fall 1997, but less sure about it being on Halloween.
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
Semesters
Fall 1996, Spring 1997, Fall 1997
Events
Detour, Blackout, Boo at the Zoo, Chapter Meetings, Serenading
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, Demographics
Additional Commentary
Black Books, Boo at the Zoo & Blackout