I stayed in a noname motel in Watervliet Friday night. In the future, especially after 9/11, you couldn’t do that without credit cards, but I simply paid cash and nobody cared. The next morning, dressed in a blue blazer and pressed khakis, I showed up at RPI and parked near the Student Union. Inside the Admissions office I was first met by a student who gave me a fascinating tour, although it was fascinating as much for what the young man got wrong as what he got right. He was a sophomore and probably had learned where the bathrooms were just the previous week. I had forgotten more about the school than this kid had learned.
After a delicious lunch in the freshman dining hall, with food of a quality only seen during parent visits, I met with an assistant to an assistant for the interview. The biggest issue the interviewer had was where my parents were. My response, that ‘I was pretty independent.’, didn’t quite penetrate. He kept asking about how they were going to find out about financial aid, and what if they had questions about the school. He finally passed me along to another person higher up the food chain who was much more at ease with me and actually took the time to review my transcripts and SAT scores. He was most impressed with the two papers I had my name on, and quizzed me closely about them.
A lot of colleges proclaim they want a varied and well balanced student body. They really stress they want students who have diverse interests. Rensselaer had a slightly different perspective. They wanted really smart nerds. Diverse interests were limited to making sure they met the various minimum quotas of minorities the federal government was looking for. When my second interviewer asked about my hobbies, I pulled out my wallet and showed him a picture of Jeana in a short sundress and high heeled sandals. He just grinned and said he had had similar hobbies when he was in high school.
Now, with my acceptance to RPI in the bag, I just needed to apply to the Army by the end of the year. My grades would be more than sufficient, and I was sure I could pass any background check. I just needed four letters of reference. I asked Pastor Joe (himself an Air Force vet), Mr. Steiner (a Marine on Guadalcanal), Mrs. Rogers, my math tutor, and Professor Milhaus, the chemistry professor who had helped during the Science Fair. All agreed to write me letters of recommendation, although Mrs. Rogers and Professor Milhaus thought I was throwing away my talents. It was easy enough to ask, since these were the same people I got to write my letters of reference for admission to RPI. I would need to have an interview with an officer after they got my formal application and letters, and enough of a background check to make it worth their while to take me.
Summer break had been enjoyable. I took three classes at Towson State, all in the social sciences field. RPI had an unusual requirement, in that while you had to take eight humanities or social sciences, one a semester, they didn’t care what they were. There weren’t even requirements to take any English courses. This didn’t become an issue until I went back to school in the ’90s and was required to take two semesters of English Composition and Literature. The teacher was an adjunct who taught eighth grade English at a local school and I had been published back when she still playing with her Barbie dolls. I already had a master’s degree by that time, but they wanted me to take English (gym, too, but I got out of that.) It was ridiculous.
Since school was out, I had to pay for the summer classes out of my pocket, but that was it. This was in the time before college costs began rising faster than medical costs. It was just a few hundred dollars for the three courses, Intro to Psychology, Intro to Sociology, and Western Civilization I (intro to history.) RPI had a dismal humanities and social sciences curriculum, as could be expected from a college of nerds. Towson State was much better in the liberal arts.
That, however, was the tough part of summer, and it wasn’t all that tough. The easy part was spending a lot of time with Jeana. Sometimes we were in her basement, sometimes I would pick her up and bring her back to the apartment, and sometimes we would ride our bikes up around Loch Raven to see the submarine races. We never saw too many submarines, but Jeana sure saw an awful lot of my periscope that summer. We worked on our all over tans too, which was a lot of fun, especially when it came time to rub on the sunscreen. Even if we weren’t working on the all over tan, Jeana in a bikini was an awe inspiring sight, even a religious experience. At least the phrases that came to mind were certainly religious — “Oh my God!” and “Sweet Jesus!” were just two of many.
Some of the more memorable dates involved going to the movies — the drive-in movies! Timonium still had the Timonium Drive-In in those days, up off Timonium Road, and while they generally played family friendly fare, by the second showing, the kids were asleep and people were getting frisky in the back seats. A couple of times I saw a few babies snoozing while their youngish parents got it on in the front seat. It all reminded me of the time I took Marilyn to the Malta Drive-In in upstate New York, a venue which actually showed X rated movies. She was wearing a sundress, fishnets, and high heels, and not much else! I forget what the movie was, but it didn’t have a candle to what we were up to or what was going on around us!
My senior year I took a second semester of calculus, a second semester of physics, and a first semester of chemistry. I figured that by the end of my senior year I should be able to finish off RPI’s science and big chunk of the liberal arts requirements, along with most of the calculus I would need through sophomore year. I was toying with the idea of very aggressively burning through some credits, more than I had considered before. Originally I had been thinking about 35–40 credits, but with the addition of the liberal arts during summer school, there was no reason I couldn’t bring that total up to 50–60, the equivalent of two years of college. RPI’s policy was to accept grades that were B or better, and so far I was working at an A level.
That would leave all the advanced math and computer courses to be done at RPI. That was a lot more important in those days than in the future. At the time, computer programming courses had to be very cognizant of the computer they would be run on. In the future, personal computers would run C++ or Java or other more advanced programming with no differences based on the computer. Not so in the early days. My first programming course at RPI was Fortran 4, with a Watfor compiler specifically for an IBM 360 mainframe running batch processing using punch cards. Just a few years later I was programming in Basic for a terminal version of an IBM 370 at Fairleigh Dickinson, using a teletype machine while working on my MBA. Meanwhile, at work I was programming with a different flavor of Basic on a PDP-11 minicomputer with a keyboard and monitor. Better to learn the language while using the computer I would be working with.
My time back at the Buckman house was very limited. I was invited on the family vacation to Rehoboth Beach, but since they would be staying at a Bed and Breakfast and I would have to share a room with Hamilton, I turned it down. For once my parents didn’t push it. I did visit for Suzie’s birthday party, although I watched Hamilton like a hawk to make sure he didn’t destroy my present to her. Otherwise I stayed away. Sunday had been my 17th birthday, so I went over for dinner and presents, which was quite strained. There was even a present from Ham, but it was obvious Mom had bought it, and she damn near had a leash on him all through dinner and the party afterwards. I thanked him and it was all he could do to keep from spitting at me.