And another crystal of idealism smashes into itty bitty shards...

[robertliguori]

I, like most of the people I know, measure myself against the people whom I am around. Switching communites can be a shock for me at times, such as when I went from being the Polaris of my high school to a M4 in the SDMB universe.
Now, I've been expecting a similar shock as I enter college. I just got it. Now, even though the vast majority of my high school wouldn't last to page two of a GD, said majority are, for the most part, tolerant people. I was an Obnoxious Atheist for three of my four years there, and only got verbally attacked on one occasion. (For the record, I'm not an OA anymore. Pat yourselves on the back, Polycarp, dreamer, other good examples.)
Now, Virginia Tech is a damn tough college to get into. Heck, they didn't let me in early admission, despite my sterling, if tarnished in one or two very small places, academic record. So, it follows that since I am (I assumed) average quality, since Tech did not immediately snap me up, the vast majority of the students must be Doper-level.
I'll try to get through the actual incident with a bit more haste than I did the intro. When I was enjoying this 'social life' concept the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, I heard a person mention a pastime of mine. We conversed, and I asked him about the funny looking pager on his belt. He sighed, and told me that he had a disease called type 1 diabeteas, which was not contagious, so don't worry. He explained what the pager (an insulin pump) was, and we talked about said pastime until the meeting began proper.
It didn't really hit me until later on. At a center of higher learning, were there really people who thought that diabeates was contagious?
Turns out there are. A depressingly large number of them.
Said guy is cool with this, as there are plenty of non-moronic people to spend his time with. But dammit, this is a college. I thought that this kind of idiocy was left at the door in high school.
People shouldn't have to put up with crap like this. Why does a college that eqivocates over letting me in house such a population of morons?

[december]

robertliguori, the next time you call people "idiots" and "morons," because they lack knowledge of a certain disease, you should be sure to spell the disease correctly.

[Guinastasia]

:rolleyes:

There's a BIG difference between spelling errors and people believing that diabetes is friggin CONTAGIOUS!

I myself am a terrible speller.

I am not so clueless as to believe diabetes is contagious.
(Which I misspelled!)

[Gravity]

Eh. He got his point across.

I'm a type II diabetic, recently diagnosed.
I'm really amazed at how many times I've read and heard variations on: "well, I would check my blood sugar, but we were in public/having fun/at a really fancy place and I didn't want to leave to go to the bathroom."

Heh. It's not like you're playing with yourself in public, people. If you gotta do it, do it. I do. Doesn't bother me at all. I've even helped to educate some strangers that have asked me about it, and show a couple of little kids what was going on.

[Sofa King]

Ahem. First, I'd just like to say:

Woooo! Go Hokies!


All hail The Untouchables! Numbah Seven on the ESPN poll, beeeoches! We fucking rule! Texas A&M, we're gonna wipe our asses with your cheerleaders come Saturday!

Slobber, slobber, slobber. Snort.

Okay. Man that sucks that you met some guy with diabetes. Guess he didn't wear a condom, eh? No if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to being a rabid alumnus.

[Caffeine.addict]

A Hokie? It's been about 6 years since I set foot in Blacksburg. Is College park still a party neighborhood? I remember they had some huge parties there as did Pheasant Run. Friends of mine have told me that they have been building the campus up.

[racekarl]

Q: What happens when you drive slowly through Blacksburg?
A: You get a degree.

Q: Why do Va. Tech grads hang their diplomas on their rear view mirrors?
A: They have to show some proof that they deserve to park in that handicap parking space.

Q: Why don't Hokies have ice on the sidelines during their games?
A: The guy with the recipe graduated

:p

Go Eagles!

[robertliguori]

Right, racekarl. Let's compare salaries in four years.
And, since I'm a freshman with no car access, I know very little about life outside my dorm, which is Pritchard.
Dammit. Virgina Tech needs moderators. LIFE needs moderators. This board is spoiling me for reality.

Employer: Well, Robert, you have an interesting resume, but I'm afraid that there are more qualified applicants.
Robert: CITE! NOW!

[Caffeine.addict]

Pritchard, that's funny. I had friends who lived there. That used to be one of the worst dorms on campus. It was all-male so it had a tendency to be very loud and very trashed on weekends. Do they still have the gang showers? When I was a student, it was the only dorm that still had them.

[Sofa King]

You live in Prichard, robert? You are a brave man. I only visited frequently, but I threw a television into The Pit once....

[Kat]

I'm torn between a tolerant "Well, just because they're ignorant about a certain disease doesn't make them stupid" reaction and a "For godssakes, it's not like diabetes is a newly discovered or rare condition! I've known diabetes wasn't cantagious since I was, like, FOUR YEARS OLD!" reaction.

[Shade]

EVERYONE is ignorant of something 'everyone knows.' It's amazing that there's a lot of them. My response depends on how they handle it:

'Oh wow, sorry mate. No one told me that before' is good.

'YOU LYING FAGGOT MOTHERFUCKER*' is a grade-A moron.

[robertliguori]

I'm not sure about Pritchard's rep. On one hand, I'm in the biggest concentration of college guys on the east coast, and the girls on campus know it. I've heard stories about the elevators, but I haven't seen anything really horrible so far. I'll give it time.
And I suppose that what I'm pissed at is that I expected the people here to be, well, more like you all. In retrospect, I've realized that finding the two nerdiest organizations on campus and making them the extent of my social life has given me a somewhat biased view of the average Hokie

[Jester]

Pfft. Of course they're ignorant. It's Tech.

Wahoowa! Wahoowa!
Uni-v Virginia!
Hoora-ray! Hoora-ray!
Ray! Ray!
UVA!
:D

[Caffeine.addict]

Wahoowa! Wahoowa!

Yikes! And they say Hokies sounds stupid? :D

Robert, you are discovering the drawbacks of living in Blacksburg. I drink but I spent a few weekends where I didn't and I had no idea what to do. If you are in to nature there is a lot of good hiking available but other than that, social life in Blacksburg is rather limited for the non-drinking. Some frightening shit goes on the all male dorms.

I remember living in an all male dorm was noisy. People would have stereo wars. This is where if someone was playing music you didn't like they would try to drown it out with their room sized stereos and speakers. They were getting complaints from the near by dorms. There was the time at the end of my first year where my genius neighbors decided to convert the shower room into a swimming pool. They got a peice of wood that was about three feet high and blocked off the entrance to the shower room and plugged up the drains. They turned on all the showers and let it fill for several hours. It was wading pool like and spilled out all over the hall. I remember our RA yelling at them for not coming to him sooner so he could have told them that they needed to use a sealant to keep the water from spilling out.

[PhiloVance]

vpi?
vpi?
VPi?
VPi?
VPi?


Did they ever beat Furman????

As to the OP, dude learn to spell, 'mkay.

[robertliguori]

Hey, I like my social life as is. I meet people who share common interests, and I have enough free time for what really matters in life (doing my schoolwork and bitching about the meal plan online).

[Bricker]

Dating myself: I lived in Femoyer.

I understand it's no longer a dorm, but office space. It was a great place to live, primarily because I could get up at 7:45 and still make my 8:00 AM class in McBride.

- Rick

[PaperBlob]

Regarding the OP, some of the smartest people I know have the most amazing holes in their knowledge. Not knowing that diabetes isn't a contagious disease doesn't make you a moron, but it does make me wonder if you've lived your life under a rock or on another planet.

Bricker - I lived in Rasche my freshman year, when all of Upper Quad (do they still call it that?) was still dorms. It was a convenient place to live - it was also close to fast food and Squires Student Center.

Sofa King - Man, all these years I've considered that TV-in-The-Pit thing a legend, and now you're telling me it's true? What, is there really a pool on the roof of every dorm too?

Anybody know if chainings still happen at Tech?

[Sofa King]

Well, it was only a small television. But that particular year--about 1989--The Pit looked like the old intro to SCTV. Someone ripped the carpet out of their room and spread it onto the slate floor of The Pit with a bull's-eye painted on it. Then everyone had something to aim at with their beer bottles, books, fluorescent light bulbs and the occasional TV or other piece of decrepid hardware.

Then some bright boy decided to bring out the Molotovs, that that pretty much ended the year-end festivities, although my pal still probably has the videotape of this brave R.A. trying to put out the fire with people still throwing shit in there.

I'm tellin' ya, we barely walked upright back in those days.

[Sofa King]

(Oops, I should add that the Molotovs bounced off the carpet and failed to explode, but they were still burning, and were in danger of setting the carpet and everything else aflame. Don't want to make the scene overly dramatic.)

[racekarl]

Heh, sorry I missed this thread for a few days. As for comparing salaries, young robert, you will never make more than your boss ;) And believe me, any BC grad you encounter will *always* be the boss if there is a Hokie around ;)

I had one employee who was a Hokie, but I had to let him go...

[CRorex]

Hate to disillusion you, but the there is a constant base level of morons around you.

There were morons at my college, morons in the bio department and more morons where I work.

[/\/\etalhea|)]

Originally posted by brujo

I remember living in an all male dorm was noisy. People would have stereo wars. This is where if someone was playing music you didn't like they would try to drown it out with their room sized stereos and speakers. They were getting complaints from the near by dorms. There was the time at the end of my first year where my genius neighbors decided to convert the shower room into a swimming pool. They got a peice of wood that was about three feet high and blocked off the entrance to the shower room and plugged up the drains. They turned on all the showers and let it fill for several hours. It was wading pool like and spilled out all over the hall. I remember our RA yelling at them for not coming to him sooner so he could have told them that they needed to use a sealant to keep the water from spilling out.


DUDE! Holy Shit! That was me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Miles Hall, Fall 1989. Those were MY RAQUETBALLS!!

It was SOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking great!

I can't believe this! What a blast from the past! I tell that story all the time still. I remember we got two girls from Slusher to come over in bathing suits, and Neil had drinks with little umbrellas in them. Then we threw the RA in and took a polaroid of him. What was his name, Mike something, Jesus freak. That was the best time. We started talking about that at dinner in Owens, and after a while, we just said "Why the fuck not, we can do it!" Oh, and just for the record, we got a rain poncho and drove it down between the board and the wall to mke a gasket, kept the water in. We eventually got busted when it leaked thru the wall into the guys room next door.

I almost flunked out after that year. Too much fun, not enough studying.

[Caffeine.addict]

/\/\etalhea|)

Holy Shit! How many times has this been? My neighbors did this in 1994. It had been done the previous year, and that was why the RA was yelling at them.

He was pissed that they had asked him because they didn't use something to seal it therefore it was leaking all over the bathroom. The previous year it had leaked into someone's room. That guy had either been drunk or high, and therefore too afraid to go get an RA to do something about it thereby flooding his room.

What's funny is that this did happen in Miles Hall and I think the cicumstances surrounding it were quite similar. It was a messed up night in general with everyone drunk and wandering the halls. The RA stopped me with a bottle of wine in my backpack and asked me not if I had alcohol and was violating school policy but why wasn't I sharing with our RA. When I told him I was heading off to Johnson, he immediately let me go and wished me good luck.

[davidm]

I won't go into any specifics about my health problems but they are definitely not contagious. One time, when I informed someone (who was a college graduate) of this they responded with something like "Yea right. I always love it when someone says somethings not contagious. How did they get it if it's not contagious? Answer that!" :smack:

[/\/\etalhea|)]

brujo

Dude, that's even better, that means we started a tradition!!

I lived in the dorms for 5 years, but I was never an RA (long story). Things like this get recycled every year, but I had no idea this was gonna be one of them. We had no end of fun playing the same practical jokes year after year on the unsuspecting new crop of freshmen. But, I can honestly say that ours must have been the first swimming pool, because I vividly remember the dinner-table conversation where we conceived the idea, we didn't hear about it from someone else. That many engineers with total freedom, alcohol, and a lot of time on their hands is a dangerous combination.

Thanks for letting me know about this, you made my day.

Oh, and let me tell you about the time we took all the bolts outta Neil's loft and replaced them with pencils............hehehehehehe!

[Caffeine.addict]

/\/ \etalhea|)

What's funny is that I've never heard of this happening in any other dorm other than Miles. I know Pritchard always had the reputation as being the rowdiest dorm on campus, but for my freshman year, Miles was definitely weirder. I had neighbors that attached a piece of pizza to their doors for a month to see what would happen. Lets just say that it will turn green and the mold will start growing on the door.

A friend of mine had a rat problem and couldn't get the RA to do anything about it, so he bought a rat trap, caught it and then stapled it to the RA's door after the RA left for the weekend. When the rest of the hall saw this, and realized he was gone, it was collective insanity. When the poor bastard returned, he found shredded newspaper all over the floor, a dead rat on his door, and the rest of it covered in shaving cream.

The worst thing that happened to the RA was that he brought a girl home one night and they were having sex. Someone stuck a portable cassette recorder by the door and taped the love noises. The next day and several times afterwards, the guy with the loudest stereo on the floor would play it. At full volume for the full five minutes.

Living there gave me the ability to live anywhere. I have a much higher tolerance for general weirdness and mayhem than most of my friends and family, and Miles is the reasons why.

[Lizard]

Originally posted by robertliguori
And I suppose that what I'm pissed at is that I expected the people here to be, well, more like you all.

You mean unemployed and living with their parents? :p
But seriously robert, the proportion of idiots you knew in high school never really changes throughout your life. Think about it: all those people just leave school to become morons in the real world, and it's the same in every high school across the land.
Study hard, and party like there's no tomorrow. Also, if a fine-looking girl wants to sleep with you, don't turn her down for any reason! I'll never forgive myself for passing up some of the fine snatch I could've had in college.