This quarter was my first one in Harrison dorm, where I would live for all but one of my remaining school quarters. Though I always tried to schedule afternoon classes, this time I couldn't arrange it, and thus had to deal with an 8am start to my academic day. My strategic response was to attempt to become nocturnal (wake up around midnight, enjoy leisure time and do homework, attend morning classes, then go to sleep in the afternoon). That brilliant plan lasted about two weeks before I gave up and reverted to diurnality.
Here I am, moving in at the start of the quarter. Unlike in Smith (beds on the floor) and Brown (bunk beds), in Harrison the beds were elevated but separate. My roommate John (a different John than freshman year) was away most weekends, which gave me some alone time to pursue creative outlets. Once, I was positioned just as in the photo, unwisely using my bed as a workspace to mix Jell-O. After accidentally spilling the solution onto my bed, I flipped over the mattress and didn't tell anybody about my mishap. Two years later, I was coincidentally assigned this room again. I peeked at the underside of the mattress, and it was STILL WET! Ewwwww.
My books for Electric Circuits, Dynamics I, Thermodynamics I, Heat Transfer, Industrial Psychology, and Psychology II. I got a C in Thermo (the only Georgia Tech class I failed to get an A or a B in).
My aforementioned 8am class was Electric Circuits; the instructor was a novelty for Georgia Tech: an attractive blonde coed graduate student. Like its student body, Tech's faculty was overwhelmingly male - though I took dozens of undergraduate classes, I can count on one hand the number of female teachers I had. To be honest, Tech's culture (during my time there, anyway) had a strain of dysfunctional gender relations - there were some incel vibes about, exemplified by a male-penned editorial in the school newspaper that whined about "Tech Bitch Syndrome." Referencing her boyfriend in this test question was the instructor's attempt to discourage unwanted attention from amorous students, I presume.
Psychology II was another of the rare woman-taught courses that I took. In advance of this write-up I tried to summon a mental image of the instructor, but couldn't do so, which led me to LOL when I pulled out the folder for the class and found this Scantron form, annotated with "Why no participation? I don't know your face!" - apparently the prosopagnosia was mutual! Throughout my college experience, I rarely spoke in class, and never went to office hours - I was content to remain anonymous and (per this example) get 58 out of 60 questions correct on a test. That's characteristic behavior for me - I'm not sure what it says about my personal psychology.
I enjoyed the psychology classes I took; to this day I won't pass up an opportunity to drop "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" into a conversation. The attached image is of a couple of pages of notes I took in the Industrial Psychology class; I ended up getting a certificate (kind of like a minor) in that field. The strongest memory I have of the course, however, is of the bizarre way the prof (a fairly young guy, with a casual demeanor) dismissed the class one day - with about 10 minutes to go before the lecture period was due to end, he said "I'm going to stop now, because I really have to take a shit" and abruptly left the room. I (and all the other students) froze in stunned silence before eventually leaving. I still don't know if this was an indiscreet admission of a physiological need, or an undisclosed psychology experiment (maybe he had a confederate in the room observing our responses?).
