Though Georgia Tech has since moved to the semester system used by most universities, when I attended, it was on a quarter system (four equal terms throughout the year), which meant that the holiday break was a short one. Thus, I flew back to Atlanta in early January. I was expecting to receive grief from a Minnesotan in the dorm because the Vikings had just notched a blowout win in the Saints' first-ever playoff game, but instead he greeted me with the news that Pete Maravich had just died; I was crushed by the death of my boyhood sports hero.
I didn't have a car at Georgia Tech, so I spent most of my time ensconced in the corner of campus near the oldest football stadium in the FBS (Bobby Dodd Stadium at Grant Field). I lived 4 quarters in Smith dorm, 1 in Brown, and 7 in Harrison. To the east of the dorms: 14 lanes of interstate; beyond that: The Varsity ("World's Largest Drive-In Restaurant"), but I rarely ate there (food is super-greasy, though the Frosted Orange is good). Warnings during freshman orientation scared me away from venturing south - on the other side of North Avenue was Techwood, the country's oldest housing project (demolished for the '96 Olympics, which took place after I graduated). On the other side of the stadium: the iconic Tech Tower, the Mechanical Engineering building, and the world headquarters of Coca-Cola.
Over the years, I consumed a lot of calories in the all-you-can-eat Brittain Dining Hall (this current-day photo comes from Georgia Tech's website). Its striking architecture looks like something out of Harry Potter, with its soaring ceiling and enormous, beautiful stained glass window. Random remembrances: the cashier who had super-long fingernails and operated the register buttons with the eraser end of a pencil; the giant bags of milk loaded into self-serve Norris dispensers, which let you pour a glass by lifting a weighted handle that pinched off the flow; the surcharge for the steak special (not worth it - a poor cut of meat) contrasted with the standard-menu status of the London broil (excellent).
Physics II & Calculus IV employed textbooks I'd bought the previous quarter, so I just had to purchase books for American History & Psychology I.
In retrospect, one of the most valuable things I learned this quarter came indirectly - the American History class used the campus mainframe to disseminate class materials and facilitate student-teacher communication, which led to my first experience with email and networked computers.
