Editor’s note: This op-ed is by award-winning journalist Telly Halkias. It first appeared in the Bennington Banner.
Shortcuts don’t have to be risky, as long as you take a steady crossing to your destination. I learned that lesson during my senior year in college, and have never forgotten it.
Back then, while studying engineering and English — an odd pairing — I had front-loaded all the former courses in return for a spring semester of literature seminars. With the easy pace and reading periods of the latter classes, I could take many siestas and go to the gym, all while improving my GPA.
So that fall, Civil Engineering 401 and its final design project was the only obstacle between me and Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon.
The assignment was to be done with a classmate. I paired up with K.C., a laid-back track star with a scalding 1:51 in the 800. As my regular racquetball partner, the match was perfect.
Under these conditions, we convened a war council on the court. Between serves and kill shots, K.C. and I developed an infallible, albeit uninspired, plan: Design a bridge. But our method was brilliant; we would just copy a real one. What a snap!
The semester rolled along. In December, we addressed the project. One weekend, we drove to a small foot bridge just off campus. We took every possible measurement of that structure, drafted a sketch, and noted all its materials. For a semester-long endeavor, K.C. and I drew a few vectors, cranked out some forces, stresses, and elasticity — and voila! CE 401 had never seen the likes of a three-hour final project.
The last week of class, we turned it in.
A few days later, while cooling down from a morning run, I heard my name booming across the quad. There was K.C. hanging out a dorm window, his breath steaming like a freight train in the Yukon.
For all of heaven and school to hear, he summed it up nicely: “Just got a call about our bridge, and Professor B. said a squirrel crossing it would cave it in! He’s giving us 72 hours to figure it out, and he means ‘figure’ with a capital F!”
The word “panic” wouldn’t do us justice. Once again, we formulated a hasty plan. I’m convinced it made us founders of the Occupy movement, though neither of us has taken credit.
But this wasn’t Occupy Wall Street; it was Occupy Hans’ Room. Hans was a mutual buddy, and had a place of his own that semester. So when the mild-mannered Swiss boy walked in on us, K.C. and I had invaded his turf with calculators, blueprints — the works.
Hans’ initial reaction: “I really don’t want to know.”
Alas, we forced it on him. K.C. and I set up a tag team. When one of us had to go out, the other kept crunching numbers. That first night, we both clicked away at our calculators as Hans brushed his teeth and got ready for bed. A few hours later, we caught an error and had to start again.
The vortex took over. At 3 a.m., we serenaded Hans out of his sleep: “Get up and start checking our math!”
This went on for three days and nights. We had to submit the revisions by 11 a.m. on the last day of classes. At the stroke of 10:57 a.m., I took the whole bundle, slid it into an oversized storage tube, and like a baton in a 4×400 relay, handed it off to K.C.
He tore out of the dorm and down the street toward the engineering department as if the Dalton gang were at his heels. According to witnesses, with 18 seconds left to spare, K.C. burst into our professor’s office to deliver the goods.
While never seeing anything but a final passing grade for CE 401, I’m still convinced Dr. B. took pity on our sorry excuse for a bridge. If a squirrel could have demolished it, there’s not much to be said for that shortcut.
Still, my final semester of poetic bliss went exactly as planned, siestas included. And through it all I learned something I’ve carried to this day: There’s no wobbly bridge to anywhere worth going.
