For the first time since freshman year, I was back in Smith Residence Hall. Though I had some awareness of the outside world - I remember watching TV coverage of Operation Desert Storm and worrying (for a half-hour) about being drafted - per usual, my focus was on academics.
Here's a composite photo of my Winter '91 room - my half is on the left. I can't recall my roommate's name, but his oddness has stuck with me - he slept fitfully, and on occasion attempted to converse with me while (apparently) in the middle of a dream. His most salient eccentricity was being the owner of Jabba, an African bullfrog. Fellow residents would pile into the room and crowd around Jabba's aquarium when it was time for him to consume a pinkie mouse (I didn't like to watch, personally).
On the right side, from top to bottom, we have M.C. Escher's "Hand With Reflecting Sphere," Jabba, and my roommate's chunky (but state-of-the-art) laptop. Toward the middle we have Jeopardy! on the TV, which sits atop the sound system - the two CDs my roommate had on heavy rotation were The Soul Cages (by Sting) and the Mo Better Blues soundtrack. On the left, on my desk there's a king cake (mailed to me by my parents), and atop the shelves is Frank E. Frog (see Spring '88), peeking at Jabba and letting him know who's boss.
This quarter was a challenging one: I had two electrical engineering labs, three mechanical engineering classes, and Anatomy & Physiology (part of the requirements for my Bioengineering certificate).
I've been guilty of academic dishonesty twice in my life; I wasn't caught either time, but the incidents weigh on my conscience. The first time was early in my freshman year of high school: I cheated on a World History test by cribbing dates I'd written on the Schwegmann's-bag cover of my textbook. The other time was in a group project in Mechanical Engineering Design I. My partners and I were pulling an all-nighter at their fraternity house, writing up the report, when we realized that our data was too messy to produce a correct result, so (desperate to finish the assignment and go to sleep) we fudged the figures. The instructor's comments indicate he knew something was awry ("I wouldn't touch your calculation technique with a 10 ft cattle prod - but for some reason it worked!"), and he correctly flagged the flaw in our procedure ("This approach is OK provided you use a multitude of points - otherwise errors compound"), but we weren't penalized for our misdeed, as we should've been.
In retrospect, I realize that during my undergraduate years I didn't grow as much socially as I should have. The circumstances of my college experience played into my innate introversion: demanding academics left little time for leisure activity, bouncing between Atlanta and New Orleans every three months prevented continuity of personal connections, and Tech's 3:1 male-female ratio put me at a disadvantage for romantic relationships - as a freshman, I correctly predicted that I wouldn't have a girlfriend during college (a self-fulfilling prophecy, but a realistic and pragmatic one).
Yeah, I know: "boo-hoo, poor me, get out the violins." No, literally, get them out - having played violin since grade school, I was able to satisfy a third of my humanities requirement (and socialize a little) by participating in the school orchestra throughout my undergraduate years. The weekly rehearsals were a refreshing change of pace from the usual STEM grind; it was a pleasure to light up different parts of my brain and to talk with classmates about something other than writing up lab reports.
There were no music majors at Georgia Tech, so for me and my peers this pursuit was strictly avocational, which suited me fine - it's nothing to be proud of, but during my violin-playing years I basically never practiced on my own; instead I learned my part via reps undertaken during group rehearsals. Things got a little more serious when the Tech orchestra merged with Georgia State's orchestra - during my senior year our conductor was the conductor of the Atlanta Opera, but he didn't have much leverage over a group of future engineers, so anxiety was minimal. During my time at Tech I relished performing these classic symphonies: Tchaikovsky #2; Mozart #35,#36; Beethoven #1,#5,#6,#8.
Here's my mugshot in the 1990 Blueprint yearbook:
