I also applied to college, but just one college, RPI - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I wanted to go back. Before, it had been just one of three schools I applied to and was accepted at. Now I only applied to the one. Why there, when I could have gotten into almost any school now? Because I liked it! The city itself, Troy, is a dump, but the school was small and intimate, and had a frighteningly high IQ. You've heard the expression about learning something from the guy 'who wrote the book' on the subject? At RPI, the professors quite literally wrote textbooks on the subjects they taught. Some of these guys were simply world class. I took at least half a dozen courses where the books we used were written by the professors, and they were used around the country. In 1973, the year I would start there, the Nobel Prize in Physics was won by a fellow at GE who had gotten his doctorate at RPI and his thesis was the basis for the Nobel Prize.
Besides, I learned much more from RPI than simply what was in the classes. The school itself is in the top 25 engineering schools in the nation, at least according to the various polls and rankings on the subject. They had an attrition rate of about 50%; in other words, half of all students flunked out. It was incredibly tough.
At every other college, every semester you would have that one class that everybody dreaded, that one teacher who piled on homework, gave ruthless tests, and graded like Attila the Hun. However, you could always tell yourself that this was the only class that semester that would be like that, and then sleep through everything else.
At Rensselaer, all of your classes were like that. I graduated down in the bottom third of my class, but I did graduate, and I have never in my lifetime faced a tougher intellectual standard. I've heard Marines say the same thing about boot camp; that if they could survive that, they could survive anything. It was the same for me at RPI. No matter what happened to me and no matter how tough life was, I survived RPI, I could survive anything. Maybe this time I wouldn't be in the bottom of the class.
Let me put it another way. Even when drunk and stoned out of your mind with a bunch of equally drunk and stoned college assholes, you could end up in a scientific discussion. I remember once being stoned and drunk with another couple of guys, and we actually designed a microwave system using negative feedback control systems to stop cars from tailgating. Thirty years later a similar system would become a common option among high end cars.
The application process was fairly simple, but it took time. There was no Internet then, so you couldn't just apply online. I had to call long distance and have a packet mailed to me. At the end of the semester my grades would be mailed from Towson High and Towson State. When the SAT scores came back, they would be mailed directly to RPI. I put in for early acceptance. The last time around I had scored 1340 on my SATs, which definitely beat my B-/C+ school grades. This time around I should have straight As and a higher SAT score. I expected to get in on early acceptance.
By the end of the semester, I learned I had beaten my previous SAT scores by a fair bit. My old 660 in reading/writing was now a 720. My old 680 in math was all the way up to 780. I still took this with a grain of salt. Hamilton was going to end up with a perfect 800 in both. Still, 1500 was a more than respectable number. When I mailed my packet back to RPI at the end of the semester, I was fairly sure I would be accepted early on.
At the end of the semester, just before the end of school, I took Jeana to the Junior/Senior Prom. This prom was held in the school gym, and was the only really formal dance held there. Mind you, things were much more formal at that time than they would be in the future, but it was still even more formal than usual. The Senior Prom required that you be a senior, although your guest could be younger than that. Generally a lot of senior guys had girlfriends who were juniors or even sophomores. (It was almost unheard of for a senior girl to be dating a junior or sophomore.) The Junior/Senior Prom was the same rules, but now included juniors, so I could attend and take Jeana as my date. The other rule was that juniors had to wear a tuxedo, but seniors didn't. I think this was because they had to rent a tux for the Senior Prom already, and renting one twice would be too expensive.
Thankfully I looked actually fairly good in my tux, which spoke volumes about how my workouts and early morning runs had me in shape. Back when I did this previously, in high school and at my wedding, it was almost impossible to find a tuxedo that didn't make me look like what I really was, impossibly skinny and wearing a too large rented suit. I skipped on the wacky colors some guys were getting, and simply went with basic black, although I did manage to find one with a vest and not a cummerbund. What a useless piece of clothing!
It didn't matter in the long run, though, since nobody would be looking at me, and everyone would be looking at Jeana. She had piled that long brown hair up on top of her head, leaving her neck and shoulders bare, and looked like a goddess. She had on a long green gown, tight through the bodice and hips, but flowing around her legs, with a halter top. She looked amazing! What in the world this girl was doing hanging around with me was something I continued to ask myself, and I never came up with a decent answer. I just thanked God she saw something in me that I didn't see.
When we left her house that night, Jeana informed me that her mother had lifted her curfew. As long as she got home before dawn, nobody was going to say a word. She had told her parents that there was going to be a major party after the dance, which didn't get out until midnight in any case, and they relented.
"So does that mean you are planning on leaving the prom early, and skipping the party?", I asked teasingly.
"No on One, yes on Two.", she replied. I eyed her and she smiled. "If you knew the trouble it took to get my hair up like this, you wouldn't ask."
"You look so beautiful, I don't know if I'll be able to wait until then. What if we're dancing and I get a sudden urge right out there on the dance floor?"
She laughed. "Remember that thing I do for you sometimes?" She held a hand up and curled her fingers, then moved it in a pumping fashion. "You'll just have to head off to the bathroom and take care of that urge yourself."
"That's cold, lady, cold!", I protested.
"On the other hand, if you behave yourself, you're going to get a very nice surprise later on."
"What?"
She shook her head. "It's a surprise, remember?"
Jeana looked spectacular that night. Oh, sure, there were more than a few girls there who looked spectacular. It was, after all, a prom, and they really tend to go all out for that sort of event. Still, I thought she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. A lot of guys thought so as well, and Jeana basked in the attention she got. It took all my willpower not to hustle her out of there until the end of the dance, although I made sure I informed her how strong the urge was. She took pity on me about halfway through the last set, and we left early. Fortunately, it being June, it was warm and neither of us needed coats. We headed back to my apartment, getting there a few minutes before midnight.
"When do I get my surprise?", I asked.
Jeana wagged a finger at me. "Don't be so hasty. Maybe if we had a glass of wine first?"
I think I broke a new land speed record opening up a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. I poured a pair of glasses and toasted her. "To the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."
"And to the equally handsome man who took me dancing.", she replied. We sipped our wine, and I eyed her expectantly. "What's on television?", she asked coyly.