Rollins College - Winter Park Florida

I spent the better part of a decade finishing a Bachelor's degree at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.  When I finished high school I couldn't see why I should go to college, there is a not a history of higher education in my family - there were few if any role models.  I went to work and 3 or 4 years later when I figured out why I should get more education I started.  I worked full time and went to college part time.  I choose Rollins because it had a dedicated part time program assuring that I could finish without having to quit working - it really helped that the place is kind of a country club with a university attached.  

The place had a reputation as a semi-tropical playground for the kids of wealthy new-England families who either were not up to riggers of the Ivy League or were too lazy for Harvard and preferred the place in Florida that fields a collegiate water skiing team.  The place dripped with old money. I am not from old money - my great-great grandfather drank his way through a fortune in the late 1800's - and there was nothing left by my grandfather's generation.  One of the jokes in the 1980's and 90's was it was easy to tell the student parking lot at Rollins from the faculty parking lot, the one with Toyota and Honda's was the faculty lot, the lot with the BMWs, and Porsches was the student lot.  I drove a new Honda, they let me into the student lot - then I started sleeping with a member of the faculty and moved the faculty lot.  

The 7-11 store across from the main entrance to campus was famous for two things, being painted pink, and for keeping Dom Pérignon  champagne in the cooler - for Rollins students to celebrate their latest conquests of learning.  

An acquaintance of mine here in DC, is building a new home a couple of blocks from the Rollins Campus that he will eventually retire in (I hope he delays retirement a few years, I like working with him.) We were talking the other day, he said lot he is building on use to have a big old house on it, that for the past 50 years was rented to Rollins students.  He said I "shutter to think how much "illicit sex"  took place on that property", my reply, was I hate to think how many supertankers of booze have been consumed on that property over the past 50 years.  Ah, college memories!