When Wharton senior Karl Schulze took his first Econ midterm three years ago, one thing was on his mind: A+.
In the fall of 1998, The Daily Pennsylvanian chronicled Schulze and about 40 other freshmen as they partied, studied and partied some more on the second floor of the Quadrangle's Speakman house. The three-part series, entitled Penn 101, took readers through the initial thrill of parent-free life to the first round of midterms.
"The test itself was actually too easy," said Wharton freshman Karl Schulze, describing his econ exam. "The curve is going to be pretty fierce."
"I feel like I prepared myself as well as I could," he said, recalling all the chapters he read, the definitions he memorized and the Econ graduate student who helped him study.
Now, awaiting job confirmation from Dell Computer, he's lost what he calls the "Wharton tool" edge.
As those once-innocent freshmen are signing up for their last semester of classes at Penn, the DP returns to their lives.
The clan, like any extended family, has seen its share of hardships and triumphs.
For example, while Schulze has shed his work hard/study harder mentality, he's taken on other challenges.
"I was pretty uptight about school and academics in high school and at the beginning of my freshman year," says Schulze, now a three-year resident of Harrison College House. "I think I'm a lot more laid back now because of the people that I lived with my freshman year. We weren't exactly lazy. We were just a tight-knit group of friends that in general didn't worry about those types of things."
A design editor at The Wharton Journal his junior year, Schulze is now active in both a management club and an Anime club and will graduate with a concentration in management, a minor in philosophy and one course away from a second concentration in marketing.
His future plans include a spot in Dell's marketing division.
"I went online one time and filled out a product feedback form. I guess I vented a lot of frustration that I had at the time, and wrote a mini-rant to the people at Dell."
Throwing around motherboard and computer chip terminology, while pointing out the strengths of Dell's competitors, he inadvertently won the attention of Dell's marketing managers.
"They e-mailed me back, and they asked me if I wanted to work for them," Schulze says.
The DP also checked in with Speakman's lacrosse player John Carroll .
Engineering freshman John Carroll also felt the shock of moving to a new environment. Carroll said he is impressed by the academic talents of his fellow classmates, and is aware that for the first time in his life he is competing with his peers.
"Where they're from they were at the top of their class, too," Carroll said. "Everybody can't get straight A's here."
The competition at Penn may be intense, but Carroll is no under-achiever. His muscular build and well-worn lacrosse stick attest to his accomplishments on his high school lacrosse team, which he captained for two years.
Also his school's table-tennis champion, Carroll has issued an open invitation to anyone at Penn who wishes to challenge him in the game.
Carroll's life pretty much still revolves around the lacrosse stick, as evidenced by his shirt: "Lacrosse: Indians invented it, women perfected it."
Though not a member of the team anymore, Carroll lives with former teammates off-campus. "I don't really run into people from Speakman that much any more. We're friendly with each other, but in the end we'll all just go our separate ways. Now I mostly hang out with the guys on the team."
After two years of intense practices and games, the Penn goalie wanted more free time.
"I didn't like always having things to do," he says, smiling. "I think it's important to be lazy. You need to be able to save your energy for important things, like partying and sex."
The former Engineering student with the lacrosse stick who now plans on cracking up the locals on the Philadelphia nightclub circuit after graduation, differs in attitude along with avocation.
"When I came to Penn, I had a perception that everybody here was way smarter than me. Over time, I've found that this isn't really true. It's not because people here have become less intelligent, it's because I've become more confident in myself."
No one has taken him up on the table-tennis challenge -- yet.
Jana Weiss, who lived across the hallway from Carroll, has also grown apart from the second-floor Speakmans.
"In the beginning, everyone went out together. Now you'll see more people going out with their own group of friends. Maybe we'll all meet up somewhere, but maybe not," said Engineering freshman Jana Weiss, who hails from California.
After switching from a major in Chemical Engineering to the more business-centric Systems Science Engineering freshman year, Weiss hooked up with other connections.
"I just formed a separate group of friends that lived other places my freshman year," she says. "Other people in the hall did that too, just like there are groups of people in the hall that are really close to each other."
Po Saidi is one of the latter.
In an off-campus house with two other Speakman siblings, Saidi still sees most of his freshman hall -- with whom he endured the midterm crunch.
Exams are often held in buildings with which they are unfamiliar. "My math midterm is in the Nursing Educational Building or something like that. Where the hell is that?" complained College freshman Po Saidi, a native of Iran who now hails from Rockville, Md. The location of Saidi's test is actually called the Nursing Educational Building.
Saidi, who sports a goatee and a mustache, pinpointed another reason freshmen struggle at exam time.
"I know so many people who are having a lot of problems on their midterms just because this is around the time when they start breaking up with their high school boyfriends or girlfriends," Saidi said.
"It's amazing to me," he says. "People on the hall, when we see each other, we say hi, we talk to each other."
Penn allowed Saidi to re-examine his Persian heritage. On Nov. 15, he restarted the Penn Persian Society.
"I tried to start it sophomore year, but I lost a lot of potential members because I started it too late into the year. Last year, the girl that I was trying to start it with studied abroad all year, and I was abroad for half of the year."
About 50 people attended the first meeting in the lounge of Harrison House -- where 25 percent of the second-floor Speakman population now resides.
Transition, these Ivy Leaguers are learning, can be a good thing.
Still, some things never change.
As Saidi says, "We were a really close hall. I'd say that of my 10 closest friends, all of them lived on the hall."
