E-mails provide wit, wisdom on college

Does this scenario sound familiar? "Isn't it the worst when you drop your pen in class and it lands just out of reach? First you try to stretch and reach it without getting up. Then you try to drag it with your feet but that doesn't work so you end up crawling on the floor like a fucking idiot while everyone in the class is wondering what you're doing on the floor." If you can empathize with that scene, you're not alone. That was just one Seinfeld-esque anecdote out of many written by Wharton sophomore Aaron Karo for his widely circulated newsletter, Ruminations on College Life. The Zeta Beta Tau brother's popular e-mail newsletter has over 5,200 subscribers who receive an issue each month in their e-mail accounts, and his World Wide Web site has received approximately 15,000 hits to date. Readers seem to feel that Karo has managed to capture the essence of college life with his witty anecdotes on topics ranging from life in a fraternity house to falling asleep in class. In an issue sent out in October entitled "Life after Two Months as a Sophomore," Karo expounded on the frustrations of sleep deprivation and its effect on his collegiate existence: "You ever notice when you are falling asleep in class, there is absolutely nothing that can keep you awake. You're sitting in the most uncomfortable chair with the teacher blabbing on and on and you're using your books as a pillow and the one thing in the whole world you want to do right then is go to sleep. But when class is finally over you go home and lay in your bed and you can't fall asleep!" Karo, who writes and sends out Ruminations on Sunday nights, generally receives 250 to 300 e-mails by the next day. For the most part, the responses have been positive, but he does get the occasional hate mail. In fact, Karo said some of his favorite e-mail comes from readers who disagree with him or just plain dislike him. He once received an angry e-mail in response to an issue in which he wrote about recent Quaker athletic triumphs. The reader wrote to inform Karo that "Ivy League sports suck." However, according to Karo, the disgruntled student misspelled the word "Ivy" repeatedly and in various ways throughout the e-mail. Karo often saves his hate-mail for its comic value, although he said, "I never respond to them." He also gets e-mails from locations all over the world, including Guam, Brazil and Venezuela. One e-mail which Karo points to with pride came from a soldier stationed in the Balkans who wrote to tell Karo that "Ruminations is very appreciated on the other side of the world." Karo frequently gets e-mail from adoring female readers who write in with requests for his attention -- and more. A usually confident Karo stumbled slightly over his words when he spoke of girls writing in with e-mails saying "me and my friends want to have sex with you." And he confessed he became uncomfortable when "earlier this past semester I got some phone calls." "After that, I unlisted my phone number," he said. Fellow ZBT brother Michael Bassik -- who is also vice chairperson of the Undergraduate Assembly -- offered insights into Ruminations' popularity. "Karo's Ruminations is so popular because he points out all the funny and ironic aspects of college life. Every joke he makes truly applies to college students throughout the world," the College sophomore said. Karo said that writing Ruminations and tending to his ever-evolving Web site takes up valuable time -- time for which he does not get paid. "I don't really make any money from it right now," he said. However, he does hope that eventually Ruminations will grow into "something I might make money from." Karo had no trouble explaining the motivations behind his continued work. He said he writes "basically [for] the response I get," also noting, "I don't think some of those people [in his readership] would let me stop anyway."

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