Volume 2: Knocking on Heaven's Door Chapter 77 What is Application?
"Very popular with girls, huh? I saw three girls surrounding you and asking you questions just now. But in comparison, you are not as popular as your roommate in the Spanish restaurant. He said you work part-time here." Eric put his arm on the table and greeted Tommy who was typing on the keyboard inside.
Tommy finished processing the form, raised his head and responded with a smile: "Jason? Of course, that guy really knows how to unleash his charm."
"You can see that the guy was surrounded by seven or eight boys, questioning him why the food portions couldn't be equal for men and women. For the same money, the ugly girl and the boys got not even half as much food on their plates as the beautiful girl." Eric remembered the scene he saw in the Spanish restaurant and couldn't help laughing.
Tommy looked at Eric speechlessly, "Maybe I can have the dorm to myself tonight while he goes to the medical center to unleash his charm?"
Eric stared at Tommy for a moment, then cast his gaze towards the hall in the distance: "My brother doesn't trust my choice enough, and I kept asking myself whether my decision to invite you to the party later was a bit hasty, so I finally showed up here. Come on, I'll buy you a cup of coffee? Let's see if you can increase my confidence in you, or I'll withdraw the invitation?"
"I still have five minutes before I finish work." Tommy first looked at the clock in the library, and then said to Eric.
Eric nodded. "Very good. I'll arrange your five minutes' work. Please find me a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover by Lawrence."
"No problem, but I have to remind you that of the twenty copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover in our collection, almost all the pages with exciting plots have been torn out and lost. I wonder which bastard who can't even bear to buy adult magazines did such a thing." Tommy said to Eric while operating the computer.
If Tommy Hawke had not experienced it himself, he would never have believed that someone would do such a thing. But the fact was right before his eyes. Not to mention Lawrence's classic novels, even Dante's "Divine Comedy" and some of Homer's "Iliad" poems with explicit descriptions were forced to be collected by students. It was obvious that the problem could be solved by buying an adult magazine, but they had to tear off pages of the book, increasing his workload.
According to Eric's request, Tommy gave him a book that seemed to have no missing pages. Eric just fiddled with the pages casually like an old bird and raised his middle finger to Tommy.
After Tommy finished the last few minutes of his part-time job, he accompanied him to the cafe next to the library, ordered coffee and sat down.
"SSD is planning to recruit 11 new students this year. Guess why I'm here in front of you?" Eric waited until the waiter served coffee and left before looking at Tommy Hawke and speaking.
Tommy Hawke lowered his head, looking at the cup of coffee in front of him. He was silent for a moment before he spoke: "I guess you come to see me now to show that you are ready to give me your A-level attention? But the other people in the fraternity obviously think it's a bit of a waste?"
Getting an A-level attention means that as long as the freshmen are not uninterested in the fraternity and actively refuse to join, it is basically equivalent to getting an invitation to join. After passing the strange assessment period, they can become official members of the fraternity.
All college freshmen are proud to receive A-level attention or above from the fraternity, which means that the fraternity appreciates you as a newcomer and is very interested in you.
"I feel like you're pretty good at organizing parties. You can be an excellent social event manager for the fraternity, but that's not enough. Is there anything else I can know about you?" Eric took a sip of coffee, looked at Tommy, and asked in a relaxed tone, "You can talk to me about it, because after the A-level attention, there will be a closed-door meeting of the fraternity. We will hold an internal meeting to discuss and decide which new members to send invitations to. I need to be more persuasive to prove my vision. You're the first first-generation country college student to get my A-level attention."
"If you need to brag about your connections and background, well, I know a Stanford freshman with a net worth of 600 million? But that guy is 100% a member of the Order of the Phoenix, because everyone in his family is a member of the Order of the Phoenix." Tommy picked up his coffee and smiled and said, "I have a good personal relationship with the prime minister and governor of a small country, and I also know a Nobel Prize winner in economics."
"That's all I need. You know a lot about fraternities, country bumpkin. Keep bragging and don't stop." Eric thought Tommy was talking nonsense when he heard what he said.
"That's about it," Tommy said to Eric, smiling.
Eric slowly stopped smiling. "The fact that you like to tell jokes isn't enough to get the fraternity to pay attention to you. Why don't you tell me why you joined the fraternity? Actually, this was originally a question for recruiting night, but it doesn't matter. Let's talk about it now, if you don't have any other connections or backgrounds you want to talk about."
"My friend, you must have a few friends who can stay by your side in college, then there are the connections in the fraternity, and finally the alumni fund of the fraternity." Tommy did not pretend to say that he had long admired the ancient and mysterious fraternity, but directly stated the reason why he joined.
"Alumni Fund? You got a full scholarship, and the summer camp also made some money, so you shouldn't be short of money." Eric asked with some confusion after hearing what Tommy said.
The SSD Alumni Fund is a charitable foundation that provides financial support to the current undergraduate and graduate members of the fraternity. Its original purpose was to help those fraternity members who did not receive scholarships and were helpless with the high tuition fees, but it was soon discovered that this was a wrong decision, because those who can join the fraternity and pay dues basically do not have to worry about tuition fees.
So the purpose was changed from initially providing educational funding support to providing both educational funding support and entrepreneurial funding support.
If a fraternity member needs financial support to start a business, he or she can apply to the headquarters after discussion by the fraternity branch. If the headquarters approves the application, the member can obtain certain financial support.
"According to the plan I made for myself before, I will start a business during college." Tommy looked at Eric: "The fraternity's alumni fund can provide initial support."
Eric didn't find Tommy's words strange. In fact, this kind of situation is very common at Stanford University. It is very likely that a student who was concentrating on the class yesterday suddenly decided to drop out of school and start a business today. He asked Tommy:
"What industry?"
"Software," Tommy replied.
"Give up. The Alumni Fund will not support you in developing erotic text games and software that you think is cool but is actually stupid. Your application will be more likely to be approved if you write that you need money to watch a striptease than if you write that you want to develop a software startup." After hearing Tommy say that he wanted to develop software, Eric's tone shattered Tommy's fantasy of applying for startup support, but he gave another suggestion:
"If your software is really promising, you don't need to spend time and effort applying for alumni funds. This is Silicon Valley. There is no shortage of software development funds. What is lacking is software that is truly worth investing in. I have seen many times that brothers around me tried to develop software to start a business and applied for investment, but were treated as garbage by investors and were dismissive. I think you can make more money by opening a fancy bar near the university than developing software. At least if you open a bar, I am willing to invest."
These are Eric's experiences. At Stanford University, he has seen countless men with glasses who dreamed of developing a software that they thought was unique and conquering the world. However, it turned out that most of them were just self-entertaining. After listening to their ideas, Eric's first reaction was to wash their brains to prevent the spread of mental retardation.
For example, Eric once saw a mentally retarded man in his fraternity trying to develop a sex software, but because the workload was huge and involved things like sound synthesis, he wanted to seek friendly investment and support within the fraternity to buy some development equipment.
When seeking support from everyone within the fraternity, the guy explained his idea, believing that this software would have the same amazing sales as Playboy and Penthouse, because the main function of this software was to allow users to open it while reading adult magazines, and with the seductive female voice provided by the software, readers would get a more vivid enjoyment when reading the magazines.
Until Eric asked the idiot a question at the meeting: If I want to make myself more enjoyable and vivid when doing five-finger movements, why should I buy this software instead of buying a VHS tape of an adult movie.
There is also a strange thing about developing a sleep-aid software that counts sheep for insomniacs. The operating principle of the whole software is that a pixel goat and an increasing number flash on the screen every second. The developer believes that it can help insomniacs fall asleep. As a matter of fact, during a small-scale friendship test within the fraternity, no one in the fraternity fell asleep because of the software's help in counting sheep. On the contrary, one brother stared at the screen and looked at more than 30,000 sheep, and his computer was forced to malfunction.
So Eric persuaded Tommy to give up software development, be a normal human being, and play to his strengths, such as opening a bar, and not blindly plunge into the software industry just because some of his alumni became rich overnight by developing software.
"No hurry, I'm still using other software and finding their shortcomings." Tommy smiled at Eric's teasing and was about to get up when he saw Stephen Bean and a member in a suit with a phoenix badge on his chest walking in from outside and walking straight towards them.
"Do they know you?" Eric asked Tommy as he looked at the two people getting closer.
"Remember the guy worth 600 million I mentioned? That's him." Tommy raised his middle finger to Stephen: "Kuangbo, long time no see."
Eric was stunned for a moment, he had always thought that what Tommy said was a joke!
But there was no time for him to continue asking questions. He could only stand up, look at Tommy deeply, pick up the book and walk out of the cafe: "Looking forward to seeing you on Friday."
Stephen sat down in Eric's vacant seat, looked at Tommy Hawke, and raised two middle fingers: "You actually came to California. What's more exaggerated is that if I hadn't heard some freshmen scolding a poor freshman for making money by selling them a half-true and half-fake fraternity freshman manual, I wouldn't have known you were here."
"The chairman of the CSLS committee, Tommy Hawke, is a poor guy who wants to make money all the time, but he is the boss of me or our group of people." Stephen scolded Tommy and introduced him to the Phoenix Order member next to him. He then said to Tommy, "Jim Murto, the housing manager of VSA, wait for you and me to pass the VSA newcomer review, and I will ask him to reserve a bedroom next to mine for you."
"But I haven't applied yet." Tommy shook hands with the boy named Jim and said to Stephen, "Is the process so simplified?"
"The person in front of you is the family sponsor of the Stanford Endowment Foundation and the most stable donor of the VSA fraternity. All I know is that VSA already had a place for me before I reported to Stanford. Now that you are here, there is also a place for you." Stephen pulled up his sleeves, revealing a delicate small tattoo on his left wrist:
"Or can you teach me what application means?"
