Being back on the Georgia Tech campus last weekend got me thinking about the glorious 6 years I spent there…Yeah, I’m being sarcastic…

Anyway, one of the first things you learn is that Tech is out to get you. No, literally, Ma Tech is out to destroy you. I think it’s actually written somewhere that professors have to be pure evil to teach Freshman level courses. How else can you explain what they do to you your first year or two. You’ve probably heard of “weed out” classes, but Tech took it to a whole other level. I remember calling WunderWife (back when she was WunderGirlFriend) and being in tears explaining how I was making C’s and D’s and I didn’t know what the heck was going on. I was sure I had made the worst mistake of my life. Look, they don’t let idiots into Tech, but it was tougher than I ever imagined.

The good thing was that I was not alone. We were all suffering. We were all questioning our sanity. When we heard how much fun our friends were having up the road at the University of Georgia, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that one day we would make more money than them.

I’m sure they call this phenomenon different things at different schools, but at Georgia Tech we called it getting The Shaft.

We were rude and crude about it and would say things like: “Gee, couldn’t Professor So-and so have at least bought me dinner after violating me that way?” or “I wondered why they gave me this huge tup of Vaseline at Freshman orientation.” And worse things which I will not write on this blog, but that you can probably figure out.

The shaft came from the Tech Tower. The Tech Tower is/was the old administration building at the top of the “Hill” as seen below:

Ma Tech’s Shaft

You will notice the sharp, pointed tip of the tower. For almost 100 years, the Tech Tower was the symbol for Tech students getting the Shaft.

But…

My time at Tech began before the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, so I was witness to huge changes on the campus. One of the last things constructed was the “Kessler Campanile”.

What the heck is a “campanile” you ask?

Well, apparently, it’s the Latin word for “giant, ribbed, spiraled shaft with 5 sharp points at the tip”.

Is that a campanile in your pocket…

Seriously, this thing is evil looking. Somehow I doubt the planners/architects understood what they were doing. They probably saw the Tech Tower and wanted to present something that would incorporate the past with the future. You know how architects are…What they failed to understand is that what they created was the ultimate shaft.

This was a shaft! We almost felt like we were betraying the old shaft once the new shaft was built.

I took a picture of both shafts last weekend because seeing them brings back the good and bad memories of my time there. Also, it makes me smile knowing that a whole new generation of Tech students are getting The Shaft!