America 1982-Chapter 84 - 7: What is Called Application
"Quite popular with the ladies, huh? I saw three girls surrounding you with endless questions just now, but compared to your roommate at the Spanish restaurant, you’re not quite as popular. He mentioned you’re working part-time here." Eric leaned on the countertop, greeting Tommy, who was busily typing on his keyboard.
After finishing with the forms, Tommy looked up and responded with a smile, "Jason? Of course, that guy definitely knows how to unleash his charm."
"It’s visible. That guy was closely circled by seven or eight guys, demanding to know why he couldn’t make the portions equal between the sexes, claiming that for the same price, the food on the plates of the less attractive girls and guys is nowhere near half of what the pretty girls get." Eric couldn’t help but laugh as he recalled the scene he’d witnessed at the Spanish restaurant.
Tommy gave Eric a speechless look, "Maybe I’ll have the dorm to myself tonight, will he be off to charm the medical center?"
Eric stared at Tommy for a moment, then shifted his gaze to the distant hall, "My brothers have too little trust in my judgment, and I keep asking myself whether my decision to invite you to join us later was a bit hasty, so I ended up here. Let’s go, shall I treat you to coffee? To see if you can increase my confidence in you, or if I should retract that invitation."
"I still have five minutes left on my shift." Tommy first looked at the library’s clock, then spoke to Eric.
Eric nodded, "Good, then let me arrange a task for your five minutes. Could you find me a copy of Lawrence’s ’Lady Chatterley’s Lover’?"
"No problem, but just to remind you, out of the twenty copies of ’Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ the library has, almost all the explicit scenes have been torn out and lost, I don’t know which cheapskates who wouldn’t even spend on an adult magazine did this." Tommy operated the computer, speaking to Eric.
If he hadn’t experienced it himself, Tommy Hawk would never have believed someone would do such a thing, but the truth was in front of him. Not only Lawrence’s classic novel but even the explicit poems from Dante’s ’Divine Comedy’ and Homer’s ’Homeric Epics’ were being forcibly collected by the students. Instead of solving the problem with a simple adult magazine, they insisted on tearing out pages, adding to his workload.
Following Eric’s request, Tommy allocated apparently intact book to him. Eric, like an expert, casually flipped through the pages and then gave Tommy Hawk the middle finger.
Once Tommy’s final minutes of his part-time work were completely done, he accompanied Eric to the coffee shop next to the library to order coffee and sit down.
"This year, the Fraternity is planning to recruit 11 new members. Guess why I’ve come to you?" Eric asked Tommy Hawk after the waiter brought the coffee and left.
Tommy Hawk looked down at the coffee in front of him, silent for a moment before he spoke, "I’m guessing you’re here to tell me you’re ready to give me your Grade A attention? But other members of the Fraternity apparently think it’s a bit of a waste?"
To receive Grade A attention meant that as long as the new member wasn’t personally disinterested in the Fraternity and rejected the invitation, it was almost guaranteed they’d be invited to join. Surviving the odd initiation period would then make them an official member of the Fraternity.
All college freshmen considered it an honor to receive Grade A attention or higher from a Fraternity, as it indicated you were a newcomer they appreciated and were very interested in.
"I think you have good Party organizing abilities. You could become an excellent social event manager for the Fraternity, but that’s not enough. Is there anything else you can tell me about yourself?" Eric took a sip of coffee, looking at Tommy with a relaxed tone, "You can talk to me because after Grade A attention, the Fraternity has a closed meeting. We will internally discuss and decide who to send invitations to join. I need more compelling evidence to prove my judgment—you’re the first college freshman from a rural university to receive my Grade A attention."
"If you need me to boast about connections and background, well, I know a Stanford University freshman worth six hundred million? But that guy is one hundred percent joining Phoenix Society because his family are all Phoenix members." Tommy picked up his coffee with a smile, "I’m close friends with the prime minister and the governor of a small country, and I also know a Nobel Laureate in Economics."
"I need just this, you understand the Fraternity’s ways, country boy. Keep boasting, don’t stop," Eric said, thinking Tommy was spouting nonsense.
"It’s about that much," Tommy smiled and told Eric.
Eric slowly withdrew his smile, "Liking jokes isn’t enough to get the Fraternity’s attention. Why don’t you tell me why you want to join the Fraternity? Actually, this was supposed to be a question for recruitment night, but never mind, let’s discuss it now, if you don’t have other connections or backgrounds you want to talk about."
"Friends. You need some friends in college to stay by your side. Then there are the connections from the Fraternity, and finally, the alumni fund of the Fraternity." Tommy Hawk didn’t give some insincere admiration for the ancient and mysterious Fraternity, he honestly named his reasons for joining.
"Alumni fund? You received a full scholarship, and you also made some money at summer camp, so you shouldn’t be short on cash," Eric said, puzzled after hearing Tommy’s words.
The SSD Alumni Fund is a charitable foundation that provides financial support specifically to undergraduate and graduate members of the fraternity. It was initially established to help those brothers who didn’t receive scholarships and had no solution to the high tuition fees, but it soon became clear that was a mistake because anyone who could join the Fraternity and pay dues didn’t struggle with tuition fees.
So, the goal was revised from providing educational funding support to providing both educational and entrepreneurial funding support.
If members of the Fraternity need funding for entrepreneurship, after discussing it at the Chapter level, they can submit an application to the headquarters. Once approved, they can receive certain financial support.
"According to the plan I made for myself, I will start a business during college," Tommy said, looking at Eric. "The alumni fund of the Fraternity can provide the initial support."
Eric was not surprised by Tommy’s words. In fact, it was quite common at Stanford University for students who were focused on the classroom yesterday to suddenly decide to drop out and start a business today. He asked Tommy:
"Which industry?"
"Software industry," Tommy replied.
"Give it up, the alumni fund won’t support you guys in developing erotic text games or what you think is cool but is actually silly software. You’d have a higher chance of getting funding if your application said you needed money to watch striptease than to develop software," Eric said after hearing Tommy’s plan to develop software, crushing any illusions about applying for entrepreneurial support, but he offered another suggestion:
"If your software really has potential, you don’t need to waste time applying for the alumni fund. This is Silicon Valley; there’s no shortage of funding for software development. What’s missing are software projects truly worth investing in. I’ve seen fraternity brothers attempt to start software businesses and apply for investment, only to be dismissed by investors as rubbish. I think you’d make more money opening an elaborate pub near the university. At least, if you opened a pub, I’d be willing to invest."
These were Eric’s words of experience. At Stanford University, he had seen countless nerdy guys fantasizing about developing a unique software that they believed would conquer the world. The reality proved that most of them were merely self-delusional. After listening to their ideas, Eric’s first reaction was to wash his brain to prevent stupidity from spreading.
For example, Eric once saw a dunce from his own Fraternity trying to develop a moaning software. But because of the massive workload involving voice synthesis and the like, he sought friendly investments and support within the Fraternity to buy some development equipment.
When seeking support from the Fraternity, the guy expounded his vision, believing that his software could achieve the same staggering sales as Playboy and Penthouse because its main purpose was to let users open it while reading adult magazines, using the seductive female voices provided by the software for a more lively enjoyment while reading.
That is until Eric asked the idiot a question in the meeting: If I wanted to make my solo activities more pleasurable and lively, why would I buy this software instead of a videotape of an adult movie?
Then there was the oddball who developed a software to help insomniacs by counting sheep. The entire software operated on the principle of a pixel sheep flashing across the screen every second, accompanied by an ever-increasing number, which the developer thought would help insomniacs fall asleep. In reality, during a friendly test within the Fraternity, nobody fell asleep by counting sheep thanks to the software. Instead, a brother stared at the screen and saw over thirty thousand sheep, causing the computer to malfunction from overuse.
So Eric advised Tommy to give up developing software and be a normal human by making use of his strengths, like opening a pub, for example. He didn’t want him to blindly dive into the software industry just because some alumni got rich overnight from software development.
"Not in a hurry, I’m still trying out other software and discovering their deficiencies," Tommy said with a laugh at Eric’s jest, preparing to get up when Stephen Binns and another member dressed in a suit, with a phoenix badge pinned on his chest, walked in from the outside and came straight towards them.
"Do they know you?" Eric asked Tommy as the two men approached.
"Remember the guy I mentioned worth six hundred million? That’s him," Tommy said, flipping off Stephen with a middle finger. "Mr. Wealthy, long time no see."
Eric was suddenly stunned; he had always thought Tommy was joking!
But there was no time to ask any further questions now; he could only stand up and give Tommy a long look, picking up his book and walking out of the café: "Looking forward to seeing you on Friday."
Stephen plonked himself down where Eric had been sitting, looked at Tommy Hawk, and raised both middle fingers: "You actually came to California, and what’s more outrageous is that if I hadn’t heard some freshmen cursing at a new guy called Tommy Hawk, the pauper, who made money selling them a half-true, half-fake Fraternity handbook, I wouldn’t have known you were here."
"CSLS committee chairman, Tommy Hawk, a pauper who’s always thinking about making money but is nevertheless the Boss of me or, should I say, of a bunch of us." After cursing at Tommy, Stephen introduced him to the Phoenix Society member beside him, then said to Tommy, "Jim Murto, the VSA housing manager. Once you pass the VSA newcomer review with me, I’ll have him reserve a bedroom for you next to mine." 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
"But I haven’t applied yet?" Tommy shook hands with the man named Jim and said to Stephen, "Has the process become this simplified?"
"You’re looking at the family benefactor of the Stanford donation fund, the most stable donor to the VSA Fraternity. I only know that before I even arrived at Stanford, VSA already had a spot for me. Now that you’re here, you have one too." Stephen rolled up his sleeve, revealing a sophisticated small tattoo on his wrist:
"Or maybe you can teach me, what does ’apply’ mean?"
