Having been rejected by my stretch school (MIT), I eschewed my safety school (UT-Austin, it was easier to get in back then) and matriculated at my target: The Georgia Institute of Technology, aka Georgia Tech. In September 1987, I moved to Atlanta to study mechanical engineering.
Upon entering my dorm room for the first time, I found that my roommate (who I hadn't met) had already moved in, and had seen fit to leave a used syringe in the garbage can. As my mind swirled with concern that I was stuck with a druggie, my roommate John appeared. This affable fellow from Alabama noticed my consternation and explained that he was diabetic (I sure felt silly). Here he is, in a composite photo of our dorm room (my half is on the right).
Because the term ended in early December, it was logistically simpler to forgo a trip home for Thanksgiving, so instead I ended up spending Turkey Day in Augusta, GA as the guest of one of my dormmates, Hiram. His family took me on a hunting trip, and I fired a gun for the first time in my life (didn't kill anything, didn't try to). When somebody shot a squirrel, I gently touched it, as if to say "sorry" (I'm sure they were rolling their eyes at this city boy). They were gracious hosts, though. I lost touch with Hiram (he might've left Tech before graduating?), and Googling his name just now reveals that he's had some legal trouble in recent years, so that's a bummer.
Having tested out of English I&II, Chemistry I&II, and Calculus I&II (thanks to excellent high school teachers Dr. Elkins, Mr. Weyer, and Mr. Lawson, respectively), my first course schedule consisted of Physics I, computer drafting, physical education, and Calculus III.
Georgia Tech had recently removed the notorious "drownproofing" component from its physical education requirement, so instead of bobbing in the pool, I was able to focus on running on land, which I was good at. The thing that leaps out at me from this worksheet (other than the not-yet-deprecated practice of using a Social Security number as a student ID number) is my weight: 126 pounds! From kindergarten through high school I was the shortest boy in my class, but in 1987 my growth spurt was kicking in, height-wise if not weight-wise (over the last three dozen years I've added only 2 more inches but almost 50% more mass).
The computer drafting class used a system that involved touching a light-pen to a plastic-y computer screen. Retrieving a printout of your work required a trip to the mainframe computer building.
Looking through my notes, I see that after a few weeks I started writing my lowercase t's with curls at the bottom (to help distinguish them from plus signs), a handwriting idiosyncrasy that persists to this day.
Physics was taught by Gus Stanford (a Tech legend and student favorite) who regaled the class with an arsenal of mischievous anecdotes (e.g. a prank that destroyed an optics lab by redrawing a positioning mark on the floor associated with a conservation-of-energy demonstration involving a giant weighted wheel). In order to accommodate the large class sizes, all physics tests (like the one seen here) were multiple choice and employed Scantron forms. I was cruising to an A in the class, but experienced an epic choke on the final: on some easy ballistics questions (e.g. position/velocity of a cannonball shot) I just could not get the numbers to make any sense, and my brain cruelly and unhelpfully distracted me with a Miami Sound Machine earworm. After the test was over, I realized my error: the problems used English units, and I was using 9.81 meters/second^2 for Earth's gravitational acceleration instead of 32.2 feet/second^2 (and since the test was graded by computer, there was no hope for partial credit). I got a B in the class but learned an important lesson about paying attention to units.
