From a young age, the idea of attending college was not a mere possibility—it was a relentless force, as inevitable as gravity itself, dragging me toward a predestined future. The moment I grasped the concept of college, my journey was as predetermined as steel train tracks, rigid and uncompromising in their direction.
I had been desperate to leave the band behind, yet it seemed I was shackled to it, devoid of any other extracurricular activities to demonstrate to a college that I was “well rounded.”
Georgia Tech was the most prestigious engineering school willing to accept me into its ranks. I didn't need the hallowed halls of MIT to validate my worth. Georgia Tech, mercifully, did not care about my lackluster participation in the school band, marching band, or other extra-curricular activities. Maybe Ivy League schools cared about and looked at student participation in extra-curricular activities, yet Georgia Tech didn’t care and Georgia Tech was extremely prestigious. All those years were wasted in musical mediocrity were for nothing.
I had hated band and I hated marching band even moreso.
I was trapped in a cycle of obligation, following a path I felt compelled to tread rather than one I truly desired.
My father, with a hint of regret, had once told me that college would teach me how to think, provoking fears of intellectual emancipation. Little did he know, I would evolve into an independent thinker, a liberal in a family staunchly rooted in conservative beliefs.
Setting off to college marked the dawn of a new era—a definitive severance from my nuclear family.
In high school, we had no guiding counselors to illuminate the path best suited for me. Through a haze of forgotten reasons, I selected engineering.
There was no confidant to whom I could confess the gut-wrenching anxiety of leaving Connecticut—abandoning my aunt, my cousins, the sparse anchors in my turbulent world. This anxiety laid bare my anxious attachment style, fueled by my mother's envious whispers that sowed seeds of doubt about my bonds with extended family.
The Drive
The distance between Southington, Connecticut, and Atlanta, Georgia, stretched before us like an eternity—fourteen hours of highway, each mile pulling me further from everything familiar. Dad's knuckles whitened around the steering wheel as we hit traffic outside New York City. Mom tuned the radio to a station that faded in and out as we crossed state lines.
I pressed my forehead against the window, watching the landscape transform. The lush green hills of New England flattened into the sprawling fields of Virginia, then rose again into the red clay foothills of Georgia. I tried to match my breathing to the rhythm of the yellow lines passing beneath us, to find some sense of calm in the chaos of change.
"Almost there," Dad announced as the Atlanta skyline appeared in the distance, a jagged silhouette against the setting sun. The Bank of America Plaza towered above the other buildings, its golden spire catching the last rays of daylight.
My heart hammered against my ribs. This city dwarfed anything I'd ever known—a concrete jungle teeming with millions of people, all strangers. The Georgia Tech campus sat nestled in the heart of Midtown, not isolated like the small colleges back home. Here, there was no buffer between campus and the real world. They bled into each other, boundaries blurred.
As we turned onto campus, we passed the basketball stadium and the baseball field. We approached the fraternities. I knew that at Georgia Tech - an engineering school - the guys outnumbered girls 2 to 1. I had not dared to dream about actually making a connection with a girl, yet. So, this statistic meant little.
What was strange was to see on a frat house the words “I hate Georgia.” Huh?
My father had to explain about college rivalries. Georgia State was our rival. Whatever.
We pulled up to my dormitory, Armstrong Hall. A three-story brick building with windows like empty eyes staring down at me.
My mind was somewhere else… trying not to think about what lay ahead.
We were looking for the “orientation” process for incoming freshmen.
Orientation: A Lonely Crowd
"Parents, congregate in the Student Center for your designated program. Students, follow your group leaders."
The orientation sliced the room into two distinct worlds—parents and students—executed with chilling precision and ruthless finality. But what in the world did my parents need with such a ceremony? They were preparing to vanish from my sight.
As I watched my parents stride away, a void of unsettling emptiness took hold—an absence of expected grief or terror. Shouldn't I have felt anguish, fear, some profound emotion? Instead, the overwhelming relief that surged within me felt perversely wrong, a glaring indication of some deep-seated flaw in my very being. Yet, I had grown up detached from my parents with no sense of “family connection” toward my parents.
I finally had what I wanted, freedom from my parents influence.
Throughout orientation, we were compelled into orchestrated activities. One day, we were brutally thrust into the rapids of the Chattahoochee River, forced to raft as a group of incoming freshmen—an exercise designed, they claimed, to forge connections with one another. I kept musing about what chaotic scene our parents were caught up in while we were left drowning in these contrived interactions. Truth be told, my bond with my parents had always been muted and distant, the kind of connection built on unspoken silences rather than shared moments.
The irony was palpable: you could scarcely wander far enough beyond the city's suffocating skyscrapers and plunge into the wild country, only to be reminded that you were an alien in your own life. Out there, amid rushing waters and sprawling landscapes, I felt like an outcast. I strained desperately to connect—with everyone around me, yet the words that might bridge the gap between me and the others evaporated into a suffocating silence. Their effortless conversations mocked me, amplifying my eternal sense of being utterly different.
I was haunted by the fear that if my uniqueness became too conspicuous, every extra second would only deepen the stain of my otherness. It wasn’t fear or nerves per se—it was an urgent, maddening drive to speak, to mask my inner deviation with the facade of normalcy.
Desperate to forge friendships and integrate into this new, unforgiving environment, I craved the semblance of normalcy. Every passing moment felt like a countdown, a chance for others to silently condemn me for my inability to engage. The internal monologue was relentless: “What’s wrong with that guy? He talks to no one; he has nothing to say.”
That negative perception—a label of misfit, an outsider—was a bitter specter that made every effort to connect even more fraught and urgent. As part of the orientation, a cold, brutal truth was hammered into us: only a sliver of those admitted to Georgia Tech would actually graduate.
We were ordered to face the person on our left, then the one on our right, only to hear the stinging proclamation, “One of you will graduate!” The implication was clear and merciless: two out of three of us were destined to fail, not by chance, but almost by design.
Perhaps it was this searing need to belong that drove me to the Counseling and Career Planning Center in that same dismal week when classes began—a desperate bid to heal the gnawing loneliness festering inside me. It soon became painfully apparent that the harshest lesson taught at Georgia Tech wasn’t hidden deep in the labyrinth of engineering, but in the relentless combat against crippling social anxiety and the ceaseless struggle to communicate and connect. Engineering? It was a dead end that had never truly resonated with me, a fact I was too blind to acknowledge at the time.
In another life, I might have had endless conversations if I’d possessed the social skills that, paradoxically, would develop at this school, during these next five years, when I learned something more valuable than engineering - social skills.
I carried the unbearable weight of shame over my shyness and my crippling inability to converse, a secret burden I couldn’t share with my parents—a taboo as potent as the unspoken silences of my childhood. Their departures were curt, mechanical—brief farewells laden with the same cold detachment I had always known.
In that brutal crucible of orientation, forging friendships wasn’t merely a luxury—it was a desperate, existential struggle, a fight for survival. In my mind, escaping into the woods or climbing trees to not be noticed for the outsider that I was didn’t seem possible.
I believed that I had to connect with others. College, especially at Georgia Tech would be infinitely more challenging than high school. Despite the lack of connection with my family, I could still count on my father to help me with science and math classes. Yet here I was alone. I didn’t know I would make a human connection with another person. Initially, I thought I would make the necessary connections to survive and pass my classes.
Most of the other Georgia Tech students had been exposed to some calculus but my own social anxiety in 7th grade had prevented me from starting advanced math in 8th grade and so I was never exposed to calculus in high school. I am not saying this to claim that I enjoyed math at all. Yet, despite my lack of interest in math, I had excelled in it. It is interesting to note that despite not having calculus in high school because my 7th grade teacher didn’t recommend her best math student, me, for advanced math in 8th grade, I still breezed through calculus, which is profoundly challenging. I would have started with Algebra in 8th grade instead of pre-Algebra. But I am getting ahead of my story.
Taking a Risk
I felt like my entire future was hanging by a thread at Georgia Tech, where academic failure seemed synonymous with a life doomed to fail.
Each evening descended like a crushing weight, my isolation reverberating through my thoughts like a constant drumbeat. It felt like the world was alive with activity while I was trapped in a void. What would people think if they saw me haunting the dormitory halls alone?
Back home, I had friends, neighbors, and family—cousins and an aunt who formed the fabric of my comfort zone. But now, I was thrust into a new world where forging connections became an urgent compulsion. I couldn't pinpoint the reason, but sometimes an intense urge demands action, as if it's a matter of survival.
On my second day at Georgia Tech, an unbearable pressure to act weighed on me. It was as if time stretched, making my solitude feel eternal and oppressive. The thought of another evening after the official orientation, aimlessly wandering past silent vending machines and deserted TV rooms, filled me with dread. The silence was a tangible force, suffocating and terrifying. The empty dorm room hallways echoed with the silence of my pacing steps creating a sense of profound isolation and desperation.
That evening, a beacon of hope flickered—a barbeque with hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling on the grill. This was my chance to break free from the chains of solitude and attempt to socialize. In retrospect, it was a good thing that I felt such discomfort and overwhelmingly negative emotions. I had learned about he Counseling and Career Planning Center and realized I would go there when the school quarter began (we had quarters and not semesters at Georgia Tech).
I spotted a guy who seemed approachable, standing with just one other person. I could manage that. I steeled myself, trying to project calmness despite the awkwardness I felt threatening to betray me. They were discussing fraternity parties.
"Do you mind if I go with you?" I blurted out, my heart pounding. "Good job," I congratulated myself. I had faced the potential sting of rejection head-on.
Soon, we were venturing off to several fraternity houses, our footsteps echoing the beats of a newfound camaraderie. We visited a couple of frat houses that night, and the next night we repeated the ritual, eventually finding ourselves at Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity.
Rush Week
This was Rush week, the time when fraternities aggressively scout for fresh recruits—new pledges.
At ZBT, everything felt electrifyingly different. Sure, every frat house we visited put on their best charm offensive, trying to make us feel like the kings of the world, but something about this place just resonated with me. While the guys I came with were busy mingling and diving into the social landscape, I steered clear of the pulsating dance floor, where the music thumped like a heartbeat.
Instead, I drifted with surprising fluidity through the house and its grounds, ears wide open. I was there to absorb, letting the frat brothers spin their enticing tales.
They were masters of "love bombing" without even knowing it—that's what psychologist call it. I was fully aware that it was a strategic ploy to make us feel like we were the chosen ones, but it worked wonders on me.
One after another, I met people who pitched the fraternity life like seasoned salesmen. Johnny exuded friendliness and warmth. Danny had an unconventional coolness that intrigued me. And then there was Stew, the cook who seemed perpetually in a drug infused haze, yet somehow managed to study Chemical Engineering. How on earth did he pull that off?
I felt an undeniable pull, a sense that this was my path. I needed connections, friendships, and never before had anything like this unfolded in such a whirlwind.
Periodically, a bell would clang, and the room would erupt into cheers as someone declared their intention to pledge.
Summoning the courage to declare my pledge was a Herculean task. The mere thought of being thrust into the spotlight filled me with dread. But I knew the moment of attention would be fleeting, quickly shifting to the next eager candidate. Still, the idea of standing in the center, under the glaring spotlight, was foreign to me.
I had to push through, right? So, I just let the tide carry me. I approached a guy named Pat, who was hanging out with Stew, and declared my intention. The room exploded into cheers, the bell clanged triumphantly, and I stood there, a reluctant focal point. I wanted nothing more, yet I forced myself forward, knowing that if I hesitated, I'd falter.
The whirlwind of cheers and attention was over in a flash. The intensity of the moment dissipated as quickly as it had come, and just like that, it was done.
After Rush Week
After "Rush" and as classes kicked in, everything shifted in ways that left me feeling torn. One moment I was regarded as someone special; the next, I was shoved into the role of a lowly pledge. I never did anything to deserve it—it was just the dynamics changing. Now, as a pledge, my new identity came with obligations and rituals, all of which culminated in an initiation that was supposed to mark my transformation into a full-fledged fraternity member.
We were handed a pledge paddle almost immediately and forced to adhere to a strict dress code—suits or jackets with ties were mandatory for the entire day including going to classes and showing up at the frat house. Every day, we had to show up at the frat house, kneel, and hold up our paddle as if asking permission to reenter a ritualistic space. Everything was done so openly that it couldn’t be dismissed as hazing, yet the whole affair filled me with a mix of resignation and mortification.
I desperately wanted to avoid being the center of attention, so I began bending the rules in my own small ways. I chose to dress casually for classes and deliberately kept my paddle out of sight until I had no choice but to join the ritual at the frat house. This quiet rebellion made me feel both defiant and deeply conflicted—I knew I was breaking expectations, yet I couldn’t see myself enduring the humiliation if I followed every rule.
Growing up, the only constraints I really knew were those imposed by our parents—rules aligned with their desires and needs. Now, it felt like I was subject to an entirely different regime, one that was equally suffocating but wrapped in the guise of tradition and brotherhood.
Most of our studying and homework took place at the frat house, unless we had to be elsewhere to use the mainframe computer or group studies and lab work. Mainframes no longer exist. They have been replaced by servers and supercomputers. Back then a supercomputer was one computer system that allowed hundreds of students to access computer resources on the mainframe computer. Even back then the speed of computers was much faster than the requests made by any one of hundreds or thousands of students and staff looking for a slide of time on the computer.
Anyway, the time spent at the frat house every day was a constant reminder that every part of life was now being directed by the new rules of fraternity membership.
By the end of the quarter, the looming “initiation” brought a fresh wave of mixed emotions. The fraternity kept the process enshrouded in mystery, assigning group tasks that were supposed to foster unity and teamwork, yet inside, I couldn’t help but question the real purpose behind it all.
You may recall a scene from an old movie like “Animal House,” where pledges endure exaggerated paddle strikes and respond with a rehearsed, almost robotic “thank you, sir, may I have another?” Nothing remotely like that happened here. Instead, we learned a “secret handshake”—a gesture that was supposed to bind us together even as it left me wondering how much of it was just for show.
Some might call this a “tell-all” story—a term that’s all the rage nowadays. And while I’m not holding back on sharing the more embarrassing or emotional parts of my experience, I’ve also decided to keep some “innocent” secrets untouched, details about the initiation that, in the end, don’t define the core of my journey.
This, then, was my first quarter at Georgia Tech—a time when I was forced to navigate the new realities of adulthood while wrestling with conflicting feelings of excitement and deep-seated uncertainty. Life seemed better than it had before, yet that improvement was shrouded in an inner turmoil that I couldn't easily unravel. I valued the distance from the home I once knew, but it came at the cost of shedding parts of the comfort I’d relied on for so long. Counseling sparked fragile new hopes that life could be different, even if I still felt the lingering shadow of my high school self haunting my every step.