Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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Each year during the first week of A-term the Activi¬ ties Fair is held on the quad to encourage freshmen to participate in campus organizations. At this booth Pep Band members give Techies the right message: Support Your School!! Daniels Hall residents find creative ways to decorate their doors and rooms. Talk about bringing the comforts of home to school! These students’ room in Riley Hall doubles as a video arcade. Three dapper Morgan men prepare for a night out on the town. Student Life 15

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Where’s Mom When You Need Her? One of the best aspects of dorm life is the close atmo¬ sphere it inspires; hallways and rooms are filled with good friends and special memories. At dinner, WPI RAs exhibit the maturity that makes them excellent student models for incoming freshmen. mes A pleasant greeting welcomes Mom and Dad to WPI Parent’s Day. Held on November 3rd, Parent’s Day offered Mom and Dad the oppor¬ tunity to learn more about Worcester Tech as watch a great football game. 40 % famous Poo Poo Platter ' ’you may not have an edible alternative. By mid A-|erm every Freshman Techie had memorized the B’s phone number. Adjusting to college courses was almost as traumatic as getting used to DAKA food. It took dedication to make it down to Goddard Hall for thoas three hour freshmen chemistry labsMwen Dean van A’s obvious enthusiasm for Calc 3 could do nothing for my confusion concerning L’ Hopital’s Rule. But as the year progressed I learned how to budget my time, kept my all- nighter 4o a minimum, and managed not to “snowflake” all year,, Before I kjj£w i L?-term had arrived. I could not beh t my freshman yeaf was almost over. jy jlow that the speciaj friendships formed during my First year at i WPI will last for a long tim My floormates and I shared not onlgpoothpaste and shampoo, but also our academic successes and failures, the adventure of going to our first fraternity party, and numerous fun times that made freshman year a blast. t 14 Student Life

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Apartment Life Surprise! You are number 1150 in the housing lottery, and have to say good-bye to that spacious quad in Founders Hall you had envisioned yourself living in next year. Big Deal, you say. Founders is soooo ex¬ pensive anyway, and this is the perfect ex¬ cuse you needed to convince Mom and Dad to let you move into an apartment— Right.! At the beginning of C-term many students find themselves in this situation and are forced to enter the race to find livable and well priced housing. The Office of Residential Life estimates that out of 2700 undergraduate students at WPI, ap¬ proximately 1500 live off campus, either in fraternity and sorority houses or apart¬ ments. And with 1500 college students flooding the WPI area in need of housing, the search to find an apartment tends to get a bit hectic. The great adventure of apartment hunt¬ ing involves a wide variety of choices. There are the gorgeous but expensive, North High and Salisbury Gardens, right on down to the “super-saver” $90-a-month run down buildings on Highland Street. Perhaps you know a senior with a great apartment and “inherit” it, but if this is not the case, you might be, much to your dis¬ may, spending most of your afternoons hoofing around Worcester to check out apartments. Locating an apartment and signing a lease are only the beginning of living on your own. Suddenly, you are confronted with unfamiliar problems you never encountered in the dorms. The bills that start to pile up must be paid on time. No more leaving the lights on all the time; con¬ serve energy and money! The heat that was always up around 90 degrees in the dorm is long gone, and most apartment renters opt for thermal underwear instead of raising the thermostat during those chilly New England winters. Gone are the good old days when you woke up and your bathroom was miracu¬ lously clean and stocked with toilet paper. Ajax and Soft Scrub take on new meaning in your vocabulary, and you begin the never-ending battle against cockroaches and other tiny friends that visit cookie cupboards. A select few are lucky enough to live underneath someone whose favorite pastime is doing Jane Fonda at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning or have a phantom landlord who enters the twilight zone when the heat goes off in the dead of winter. Despite all these headaches, most under¬ graduates would not trade their off campus experience for life in the dorms. The freedom from Residential Life’s regula¬ tions offers student’s the opportunity to truly be on their own. Parties do not have to register, and there are no RAs to tell you to turn down your stero. Techies face real life situations while they enjoy the best of col¬ lege life. In fact, many students’ lasting memories of their years at WPI are of times just sitting around their apartment socializ¬ ing with good friends. 16 Student Life