Someone to help me sleep

There is, of course, much more. I’m about two months behind in the timeline of things, so let fill you in on the various happenstances that the college experience invariably is known for as quickly as possible.

Move along, dammit!

Move-in day at USC might as well have been renamed to “Show Us Everything You Own In Cardboard Boxes” day, because by and large, that’s what it was at the University of Spoiled Children. We drove in at around 10 AM, or what one might logically deem the most inefficient possible time to show up. But thanks to reverse psychology and gloriously unsound logic, most of the frosh moving in mistakenly thought that 10 AM would be too late, so they all got to USC bright and early. A few of them in that early morning throng were probably crushed to death against the cast iron gates (or perhaps sliced into neat slabs like Play-Doh forced through a fork), begging to be let in and transport their massive arrays of personal belongings as soon as possible. I can’t say for certain this actually happened – USC probably would cover that up, and the janitorial department probably has some powerful enzyme cleaners to mop up after unsightly deaths on Move-In Day, but I would wager that the chances of such deaths are “More than likely.” In any case, it wasn’t terribly crowded when the Wongmobile rumbled on campus.

New Residential College, so named because its residents are mostly new (surprise, surprise) is located right off Gate #3 off Figueroa St. They had placed an orderly row of bright orange cones, and a uniformed man stood there with sweat streaming down his forehead and a black radio screaming static clutched between white knuckles, telling us through clenched teeth that the street was most definitely closed and to move on to the next gate. Behind him, the little street was packed with cars in the process of being emptied of their significant loads.

For the average Spoiled Child, moving farther from his or her destination would pose a grave threat, because it would require a veritable caravan of human slaves several hours to transport every one of their cardboard boxes to their rooms. Luckily, I am not the average Spoiled Child, and had predicted this massive disorderly transport of belongings early in the pre-planning stages. Every single thing that would go in my room, then, would be able to be carried by a single person. Years of diligent study of the SAS Survival Guide, and various other manuscripts read only be paranoid right-wing wackos dug into the Montana woods with a hunting rifle, military surplus M.R.E.’s, and a rusty revolver loaded with a single bullet assigned with the grim task of “gitin’ yerself befor’ th’ gubmint gits you,” as well as spending that month in India has proven to me in no uncertain terms that if you need more than you can carry on your back to live, then you better reevaluate how you’re living. It was armed with this keen insight (and my ripped, toned muscular physique) that I continued onwards to the next gate with little worry about having to walk a little farther with all my stuff.

"Honey, what the hell is that pink thing?"

Gate #4 was a few hundred yards off. We pulled up to the traffic guard. “Where are you folks headed,” he asked. “New Residential College,” I replied. His face scrunched up like I had just plucked out four of his moustache hairs. “Well, you folks are in the wrong place.” He started to give us explicit directions on how to turn the car around and fix our stupid error when my dad stepped in, explaining the overflow situation at Gate #3. He stood there for a moment, confused. “You’re going to have to do a lot of walking” he said, worried that we might take out USC’s organizational issues on him. “We can see the building from here. Trust me, that’s not a lot of walking,” I told him. “Alright, suit yourself” he said, and we were directed into a space by the curb. The car in front of us was full with boxes of stuff, and a worried mom stood worried guard outside, tapping her foot impatiently. She would be aghast when she saw me, with a backpack, hand-drawn luggage case, and laptop case, triumphantly trumping off towards NRC with everything I will need in a single trip. I entertained the notion that, in a rage at my efficiency, she set fire to her S.U.V. and danced about it in a tribal frenzy as her daughter and her husband returned to get another load of boxes, aghast at the image before them, black smoke curling upwards into the sky and piercing another hole into the tattered ozone layer above Los Angeles.

Outside the dorm, an a capella group was singing “California” by Phantom Planet, the most obvious choice of a pop song to be singing at this particular moment. I hurried inside, lest they transition into a Paul Simon ditty or some other a capella staple. The inside was full with people moving everywhere (mostly laden with large boxes, or looking tired from having been laden with tall boxes). I picked up a massive packet of paper goods and received my room key (third floor. Must be hell for everyone else to move all that stuff up there). The Resident Advisors present were particularly proud of the NRC T-shirt design. It is black, with a picture of a bran muffin astride the Greek ‘nu’ giving it a good whipping, with the caption “A bran’ spankin’ new year.” Kevin Kimura would have been simply bowled over by this pun, and probably would’ve bought four of them, one to wear, two to send to friends, and one to get laminated and framed. I passed up the opportunity, and headed upstairs to deposit all my stuff, and fill out an inventory form.

One (1) Room Sign (S) Scratched. Cost: $80 + parts and labor.

The inventory form is USC’s way of having paperwork when they charge you for stuff you never touched but is broken. You must, with your roommate, go through the entire room and mark down everything that’s in there, how many are there, and its condition. You are allowed minimum space, and must use one of the defined acronyms for damage. Not surprisingly, there are very few of these acronyms to choose from to describe objects that have been used and abused by countless scores of irresponsible freshman before me. It is amazingly irritating to go through your room, and be forced to note that you have, in fact, four drawers on your side of the room. The drawer hardly opens without a gallon of WD-40 helping it along its rails, but there isn’t a two-letter code for that particular type of “damage.” Luckily, my light bulbs were all in their sockets, my drawers and closet, in fact, existed, my door was there and swinging (although the front looked like somebody had marked the door in the medieval manner, indicating the occupants inside have bubonic plague.) Also, my doorknobs appeared to work fine.

And, yes, unbelievably, they ask you to tell them how many doorknobs you have. This is very stupid because if you only had one doorknob, you either would never be able to ever enter your room, or would never be able to get out. They’d find your starved corpse lying on the floor collecting ants and flies, blood and pus oozing out of every orifice, and then charge your account for repair and labor for “WD (water damage) on your one (1) carpet.”

As I walked past most of the rooms, I couldn’t help but notice the sheer density of goods on the walls, the floors, the shelves, and anywhere else goods can fit. Some people’s rooms were indistinguishable from the stock one USC offered, that is to say, people put hell of mods on their rooms. Some people hung huge flags or carpets above their bed, or rearranged furniture to better accommodate their goods. Seems like people just can’t let go of their old lives, and when they step into their dorm rooms, they want the exact same experience they get back at home. Since my room in Seattle is located directly beside a 110 dB home alarm system with a propensity towards surprisingly going off at 4 in the morning, it is perhaps obvious why I wouldn’t necessarily want to relive the Seattle Experience.

Of course, with my luck, my room happens to face Figueroa St. and Parking Structure A. According to the ruckus I hear throughout the day, Figueroa is the preferred police and firefighter thoroughfare for any sort of emergency happening in the greater Los Angeles area. It is also the preferred drag strip for wanna-be ricers and soup-ed up coffee can muffler hot rods for the entire southwestern United States. Helicopters, both police and news, happen to love the airspace above NRC for its gorgeous views of traffic blowing by on the 110 Freeway, and views of inner city youth blowing each other away. This makes for a rather noisy ambient atmosphere.

Rather, it would make for a noisy, unlivable room, if I didn’t have this:

This Commercial Grade Honeywell fan, which I have affectionately deemed “The Peacemaker,” cools our room with commercial power that nobody on the floor has access too and can only dream about as they swelter in their respective rooms. This bad boy makes the prayer flags I hung above my bed flap like mad, and anything I tack to my board must be tacked on all the corner support points, lest I want things flying around. This is only the low setting. On “High,” Boeing engineers will come by and ask if they can use the room as a wind tunnel to test out wing prototypes. The pleasant drone of the fan lets me know its doing its important work, as well as muffling the outdoor noise.

The process of getting to know people on the floor was slow, but The Peacemaker was a good conversation piece, and it drew people down the hall into our room (only after they were forcibly knocked into the wall directly across from our open door by its powerful air currents, of course). The people on the cinema floor, as I have mentioned before, are all groovy cats. Of course, the very fact were on the cinema section of the floor designates us all as huge nerds, but as they say, misery loves company. Many on the floor share an equal disdain for fraternity and sorority life, as well as the folks these places tend to attract.

To say that fraternities and sororities are big at USC is like saying the Hindenburg disaster was a mild conflagration. As many as one out of eight people at USC are in a fraternity or sorority, with many more participating in the rush. I myself had no intention of joining, considering my established preference for “Rum and Coke, hold the rum.” Also, I’ve noticed that, by-and-large, fraternities and sororities are a largely Caucasian affair. The Daily Trojan, our on campus daily newspaper, noted this a few weeks after the start of classes, saying some frat boys and sorority girls know exactly who you’re talking about if you ask them about the “Asian kid.” No thanks, I suppose.

I also base my opinions on fraternities and sororities on perhaps unfair observations. The following two conversations are ones I overheard between frat boys right outside my door and in the bathroom respectively.

Frat Guy 1: Dude, I can’t get with chicks.

Frat Guy 2: No shut up you are totally smooth.

Frat Guy 1: You think?

Frat Guy 2: Yeah totally. You could get with any chick here.

Frat Guy 1: I gotta tell you. In high school, I was always with a chick, like every two weeks I’d be with another one.

Frat Guy 2: Dude, that’s awesome (sound of high fives)

And…

Frat Guy 1: (urinating, midstream) Man I get the feeling this was a huge waste of time coming all the way down here.

Frat Guy 2: (also midstream) What do you mean?

Frat Guy 1: You know that one brown haired girl? She’s totally dependent and needy. She is totally impossible to get with.

Frat Guy 2: Yeah? Well check it out – tonight, I’m in. In.

Frat Guy 1: Really?

Frat Guy 2: Hell yeah! (sound of failed high fives hitting the partition between the two toilets)

Frat Guy 1: Ow.

On top of this, I have found that, in general, sorority girls are either extremely stupid or extremely slutty, or both, based on the following single observation: The vast majority of sorority girls wear bright, short, short six-inch skirts in a school dominated by bicycle travel and stairwells linking floors. I’ll let you use your imagination there, you pervert, but the bottom line is that they either lack three-dimensional spatial awareness, a evolved skill necessary for the survival of the human race, or are complete attention-grubbing whores (arguably, also essential for the survival of the human race).

A. Rob at Stanford told me he knew a girl who wanted to join Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He told me that at Stanford, SAE stands for “Sexual Assault Expected.” "Yeah," he explained to me in his effortlessly candid manner, "She’s pretty much gonna get raped."

Of course, these are unfair generalizations. I’m perfectly aware of the philanthropy of frats and sororities, and the bonds between brothers and sisters, and the various positive aspects of these organizations, etc. But I read how a sorority was sent to tutor some kids at a local grade school. I can’t imagine how awkward and difficult that must have been. For the sorority girls.

As kids decided to rush, they called home to get their suits shipped over (or, since so many people are from California, have mom drop it off in the BMW 7-Series). The next few weeks were full of kids in suits and girls in their high school prom dresses walking around to classes. I want to see a frat or sorority have some creativity in this whole rushee dress code thing. Imagine if you had to, for the week, wear a live animal or a suit made of human flesh or something crazy like that. You’d be a way cooler frat than all those boring suit and tie types, I’d think. The craziest they ever got was, I heard one fraternity required rushees to wear a red tie. I heard one rushee express frustration at this unfair dress code requirement. He was almost completely denied entrance, if it hadn’t been for the existence of K-Mart.

Next week, I’ll talk about Trojan Pride and my lack of it, food and my disdain for it, and exercise and how I just about drowned.

-f.w.