Chapter 8 ACE - EXCERPT ONLY
Lesson: Survival Takes Determination
The next major milestone would be Thanksgiving, immediately followed by finals. That was about a month away now. Penn had switched from the old system of the semester break at Christmas and then students returned for final exams. The new system meant staying at school until nearly Christmas, but completing all his course work. This seemed so logical to Aaron, he was not sure why the other schedule was ever the standard. It also meant that the semester was compressed and there was little room to slack-off.
A bit of good news was that word was out across several of the “houses” in the Quad about Aaron’s typing skills. He needed that money, and these were simple cash transactions. Generally, it was 50 cents a page, and the title page was not charged. Aaron had spent some time at the library reading up on the current citation systems, so the student requiring the paper could stipulate either footnotes or endnotes. Of course, the conflict was that he could either type papers for others to cover his out of pocket expenses, or put more time into studying. The need for money usually won out. What he was starting to realize in even more depth was that a “full scholarship,” did not mean drive-out financing. Penn’s tuition and fees, some of the highest in the country, were covered. However, his books and living expenses were not covered. The NDSL Federal Loan covered his dorm room, but left only a small amount for the rest.
Aaron was trying to figure out how to do better in his courses so that his mid-term grades would not become his final grades for the semester. He focused on being better organized about studying. His problem with not being awake after supper continued. Coffee helped, but then, only to a certain extent. About once a week, he had a late night hike with Tom to the computer center for him to run a report. That did seem to wake him up.
The grad students supervising the biology lab irritated him even more as the semester wore on. There were some interesting experiments, he had to admit. His small team did a skin transplant on a white mouse. It was a successful procedure. Afterwards, any team member could take the mouse home. Being a germaphobe, he was not a big fan of any rodent. No other team member wanted it. He had learned that in one of the other houses in the Quad, there was a student with a snake in an aquarium. After the lab, he walked directly to that student’s room with the small mouse in a shoe box. The mouse was placed in a corner of the aquarium. For about three or so minutes, nothing happened. The small snake seemed unaware of the mouse. Then, in a split second, the snake had somehow sucked the front half of the mouse into his mouth. For about five minutes, the snake gradually pulled the rest of the mouse into his mouth. The lump created by the mouse was visible on the outside of the snake. Its owner proudly explained that this was a weekly process, and the snake would not eat again for a week. Aaron was glad to be past both the lab experiment and the production with the snake.
Going home to Norfolk for Thanksgiving was not in the cards. He could not afford either the cost of the bus fare or the time away from his studies. He was also producing more reviews, and needed to present the written reviews to the Alternative, and then record the reviews for WXPN. He had stopped doing any DJ slots in order to focus on his art and theater reviews. He called his aunt in suburban Philly and not surprisingly, he received a warm invitation for Thanksgiving dinner. Even better, she suggested that he ride with his uncle’s sister, Marlene. She lived in center city Philly and he had met her several times over the prior years. She was about 12 to 15 years his senior, a petite woman with a responsible support position at a financial firm downtown. Aaron called her and she readily agreed to give him a lift. He would take the Subway-Surface car downtown and would then walk to her townhouse. They would meet at 11 AM on Thanksgiving morning, which would have them at his aunt and uncle’s house prior to Noon.
In a nearby house in the Quad, there were a number of Asian engineering students who apparently had requested to live in the same dorm. Aaron became acquainted with them since he began typing papers for a couple of the students as papers became due after the middle of the semester. He was invited to join them for their Friday night dinners. Aaron initially declined since his Friday night dinner was included with his Cafeteria ticket, but the students let him know that it would be good publicity for his typing business to join them.
The Asian students’ Friday night tradition involved traveling to Philly’s Chinatown, located in a tough neighborhood not far from Center City. As nobody had a car, they would simply take the Subway-Surface car downtown and transfer to the Subway for a few stops. It was then a short walk to their favorite restaurant. “Restaurant” was a charitable term. It was a battered old storefront with a few wooden picnic tables just inside the front door and then a large counter behind them. Obviously, most of its business was takeout food. It was close to the route through downtown to the Ben Franklin Bridge, which crossed into Camden, NJ. Commuters would park in front and run up to the counter to pick up their takeout orders as they prepared to cross the bridge on their way home.
The group would crowd onto the benches at one of the picnic tables. A couple of the Asian students would do all the ordering. The table would shortly be covered with delicious dishes. In the center of the table would be a whole baked fish. Several of the students would compete to get to the eyes of the fish first. This grossed-out Aaron, but he held his tongue. Sweet and Sour Pork, Moo Goo Gai Pan, and other common Chinese dishes were served family style, covering the rest of the table. Pork egg rolls and large bowls of rice accompanied the feast. Tap water and large pots of hot tea were the only drinks served. The students taught him to tap in front of his place if someone was serving tea to indicate that he was ready for more tea. The Asian students ate with chopsticks, and they patiently taught Aaron how to use them. He quickly mastered the art of using them. Most nights, he would finish any unfinished dishes left in the center of the picnic table. There was always ample food. After eating, they each put $5.00 in a pile on the table and that covered the food and tip. They then made their way back to the Quad.
Aaron would make only a handful of the Friday night forays into Chinatown with this group during his freshman year. Many of his growing number of theater invites were for Friday nights, so he stopped going later in his freshman year. He was also trying to catch as many basketball games as possible at the historic Palestra venue on the Penn campus. Even though the eight Ivy League schools were historically associated with strong collegiate sports, the formation of the Ivy League in 1954 included an agreement to no longer award athletic scholarships. Other major schools were able to recruit the best high school athletes by awarding athletic scholarships. Because of this, the Ivy schools mostly played each other and a handful of private colleges. One exception was the “Big Five.” This pit Penn against four other local colleges: Temple University, Villanova University, St. Joseph’s University and La Salle University. All the games were played at the Palestra. Penn had been surging in basketball, and this looked to Aaron like a good time to attend the games.
With all the activity, he had to continually remind himself that he was still taking a tough pre-med schedule of classes. Further, the first half of the semester, and now reaching the two-thirds mark, looked pretty bad. He found it increasingly hard to attend the 8 AM German class three days a week. Then there was the Calculus class the other two mornings a week. The German class itself was not that bad, but going that early in the day was the challenge. It seemed like the Calculus class was simply pointless. The instructor continued to teach with his back to the class as he wrote extensive formulas on the chalkboard. Aaron found it interesting that Tom’s computer calculus class was going so well. The issue was that he was told he had to take the mathematical calculus class if he wanted to do well in the advanced science courses expected of a pre-med student.
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