Feelin' It: A College Journey of Epic Proportions

By Eric V. Warren

Every year, thousands of Black students head off to predominantly White colleges and universities. What is it like to be one of those students? "Feelin It" is a deep dive into the thoughts, feelings and experiences of a Black student finding his way through a small university in Michigan's untamed Upper Peninsula. Take a trip back in time to the early 2000's, where the author reckons with homework, relationships, and his own identity. Filled with highs, lows, humor, and pop culture references, "Feelin It" is sure to bring nostalgia, entertainment, and enlightenment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986107721

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Feelin’ It

© 2022 by Eric V. Warren

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 979-8-98610-770-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 979-8-98610-772-1 (eBook)

Dedicated to the memory of my father,

Ricky M Warren.

Some of the names in this book have been changed to protect the innocent, the not so innocent, and those who wish to remain anonymous.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Wonder Years, Detroit

Chapter 2 Quest

Chapter 3 I-House

Chapter 4 Ice C.R.E.A.M

Chapter 5 Best-Laid Plans

Chapter 6 The New Year’s Incident

Chapter 7 The Winter Soldier

Chapter 8 Summer Breeze

Chapter 9 Nerd Blackface: Back Like I Never Left

Chapter 10 International Perspective

Chapter 11 The Match

Chapter 12 Failure à la Mode

Chapter 13 Lightning in a Bottle

Chapter 14 Cruel Summer

Chapter 15 Return of the Mack

Chapter 16 Old-Time Religion

Chapter 17 E-Dubb: The Final Curtain

Chapter 18 Bittersweet Symphony

Chapter 19 Pomp and Circumstance

Epilogue

Preface

In the year 2012, on an otherwise unremarkable day at work, I met a coworker who had written and successfully completed a book about his own life. Up until that day, I had never met anyone who actually finished the monumental task of writing an entire book. I was inspired to start scribbling down a rough draft of my own life story, because I thought if he could do it, I could do it too. My coworker had a much more interesting life, or so it seemed to me, because it was filled with ups and downs, twists and turns, perils and promise—everything you want in a story. My life had been exponentially less perilous, but I was inspired to start writing my own memoir, nonetheless. At the very least, the completion of such an ambitious goal would serve as a personal milestone for me.

I quickly realized that my most interesting stories came from my time as a student at Michigan Technological University (MTU). They were the most endearing, quirky tales I had to offer. The cold, isolated landscape was a strange backdrop for the coming of age of an inner-city Black youth. It was a place ripe for culture shock and new experiences. Invariably, my coworkers would be captivated by at least one of my weird stories from the great frozen beyond. These same stories entertained my friends and family members as well. I decided to make my college tales the central focus of my book and began writing them down in my spare time. The condensed time period which I attended college (2003–2006) set the trajectory for the rest of my adult life. The amount of time one spends in a situation is not always proportional to the impact it has on their life. My grandfather served in the military for just two years, but they proved to be profoundly formative and provided a wellspring of stories that he would retell for the rest of his days. There was a clear difference between the person I had been before college, and the one who emerged after. I would be unable to sufficiently tell any story in my adulthood without mentioning at least one story from my college years. As it so often happens, life got in the way. I moved, changed jobs a few times, started a family, and found myself with less and less free time. The project was shelved for years.

In the midst of a pandemic that has reminded us all of our own mortality, and amid the exploding racial tension and angst in the United States, I found renewed motivation for bringing these stories to life. Leaving behind an account of myself, in my own words, that everyone could enjoy for all time drove my final push. The pride of life tricks us into believing that there is always time to achieve our goals, finish our projects and pursue our dreams. Youth deceives us, and we are often left stunned by the sudden appearance of death.

Another, less prominent motivation of mine was the desire to tell the story of a regular guy. We all love the story of the guy who climbs Everest with one arm and no legs while his trusty blind rescue dog trots alongside him. And they do it in record time, with no oxygen! I’m not even sure that story exists, but I would probably read it if it did. That kind of story is riveting and suspenseful, but it is a far cry from anything most of us will ever experience in our lives. My hope is that by presenting my story, the audience it finds will see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Even if you aren’t revolutionizing society as we know it, you still have a unique story that is worth telling. My seemingly routine enrollment at Michigan Tech contained episodes of triumph, failure, self-discovery and growth that may not beat the double-amputee mountain-climber but may be more inspirational and entertaining to those who relate.

My late-night keyboard tapping and sometimes extended lag before coming to bed with a screaming newborn were not ideal. If not for my wife’s grace and understanding that this was just something I needed to do, this project would never have been completed. To my beautiful children, Isaiah and Naomi: learn from your dad’s mistakes, don’t try to be perfect, and always keep in mind that your intrinsic value never changes. Love hard, laugh loud, be yourselves, and rest safe in the knowledge that your dad always has and always will love you. To my own father, may God rest his soul; I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Without his dedication to making the long drive to school every fall and his encouragement to think bigger than my surroundings, there would be no story to write.

Chapter 1

The Wonder Years, Detroit

My basketball skills were not impressive, and my singing abilities were about as nonexistent as my rap prospects were. I had no rich family members who would die and leave me an inheritance, nor parents who had set up a trust fund for me. Well, there went all my get out of the hood free cards. The only way I knew to succeed was to take the long road following the age-old, tried-and-true path of higher education. How else could I claim my sliver of the American pie and achieve my American dream? I needed to graduate high school, get into a decent college, pick the right major, and land a lucrative job. Although completing a college degree does not guarantee success, it was a far better option for me than scrambling for a job right out of high school, going to the military, or waiting for that lucky lottery ticket to fall out of the sky (or someone’s pocket).

Before we jump into my college journey, allow me to provide some background information. My childhood was mostly prototypical of any inner-city Black youth of the time. I hail from a little town by the name of Detroit, in the southeast corner of Michigan, built on the river of the same name. Maybe you have heard of it. I was born in the mid-1980s, the same decade that gave us such wonderful innovations as crack, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and Reaganomics. It was a wonderful time, or so I have heard. I’m being cynical; it wasn’t all bad. I grew up in a time when kids eagerly anticipated Saturday morning cartoons with a bowl of their favorite cereal on hand. Hulk Hogan and Macho Man alternated between tag team partners and sworn enemies when wrestling was on. I was barely in grade school when Michael Jordan was still trying to make it past Isiah Thomas’s Bad Boys for a championship. A new music video from Michael Jackson could interrupt any television broadcast, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was the ultimate action hero. My mother and father divorced when I was five, so I was raised in a single-parent household. Despite that, I knew my father and had a good relationship with him, so this isn’t one of those my dad left for a pack of smokes when I was seven and never came back kind of stories.

Detroit was a checkerboard of good neighborhoods, ghettos, and smoldering remains from a bygone era of prominence. The population of the city was nearly 90 percent Black at the time, and virtually all of my friends, family, and classmates reflected this. My teachers in Catholic school were disproportionately White, gas station and grocery store owners were often Middle Eastern or Arabic, but everyone else was Black. My house always felt like a home, complete with a front yard and backyard in a decent neighborhood known as Woodbridge. I was blessed with the divine providence of living right next door to my grandparents. They bought a duplex when my mom was still a kid, and after her divorce, they let us rent the side that was vacant. I occasionally watched the show The Wonder Years when I was growing up. My daily life looked nothing like the suburban Americana depicted in the show, but I still envisioned myself as the main character, Kevin Arnold, from time to time. He was an Everyman of sorts, and we had a few things in common. I too had a bespectacled best friend, a quiet demeanor, and a social status that was neither remarkably popular nor a social leper. That is where the similarities ended.

The image Detroit evoked throughout the mid-1980s and the 1990s was always some variation of a lawless, postapocalyptic, smoking crater where a city used to be. The once thriving industrial economic engine had all but seized up. The automotive capital of the world, the home of Motown records, the Paris of the West experienced a decline that was unprecedented for a major American city. The only survivors of the catastrophic consequences of race riots, white flight, and the waning automotive industry were pimps, murderers, drug dealers, and welfare moms, according to outsiders. Detroit was easy fodder for disparaging comments and the butt of late-night talk show host’s jokes. Many Detroiters walked around with a chip on their shoulders because of the way we were seen in the national spotlight.

While my single-parent household and fixed income made for a prototypical city existence, my life was less mired in conflict than one would expect. Life below the poverty line afforded us the basics, but disposable income was rare. I never got into fistfights, played the summers away in my backyard, and traveled freely within the borders of my neighborhood. There were no drive-by shootings to duck or gang members for us to appease. I walked to school alone or with my sister without major incident. The occasional stray dog would startle me along my path, but people rarely bothered me. I walked past vast open fields and long-abandoned buildings on my way to school. My parents and grandparents would regale me with tales of what once stood in place of the graffiti-laced structures and overgrown fields. I could hardly envision the city as it must have been in their day, with bustling streets and shops on every corner. I felt a sense of community when the local store owners knew me by face or by name, or when I randomly bumped into my classmates while running errands. It was possible to live a somewhat normal childhood, even in the valley of the shadow of death as it was depicted.

As I grew older, I came to understand the prevalence of random violence and the fear that goes along with that. My mom entertained a few crazy boyfriends that made life at home tense sometimes. A few near misses reminded me that minding my own business wasn’t necessarily enough to prevent me from becoming a statistic. When I was in high school, a homeless guy pulled a knife on me for some cheeseburgers. Once, I was a few minutes late to the bus stop because I was waiting for my sister to finish up a test she was taking. Upon our delayed arrival, we found the bus shelter had been peppered with stray bullets. Just minutes earlier, one of the guys at the bus stop exchanged words with someone driving by, and the shooting began. We were just in time to witness the aftermath. My mom taught me not to start fights or engage with those spoiling for one, because you never know what weapons they might have.

I survived the Detroit public school system from preschool to the third grade. I attended Edmonson Elementary, which was right across the street from the notorious Jeffries Projects. Our great-grandmother lived in one of the high-rise buildings and our father was a byproduct of those same housing projects. I was a good student and had a stable group of friends. From grades four through eight I did hard time at Saint Leo, a Catholic school. Edmonson’s classes only went up to the fifth grade, so when my sister graduated, my mom decided she didn’t want her to attend the local middle school. She felt the education was weak and the social climate was too wild for her children. It had turned into a very different school from the one she had known back in her day. I wasn’t exactly thrilled when my mom told me I was going to be starting at a Catholic school in the fall; we weren’t even Catholic. I was getting ripped out of a familiar scene and spliced into a movie already in progress. Saint Leo was a K-8 school, so it made sense for me to follow my sister. Plus, it meant neither of us had to walk to school alone. I was too young to appreciate what a life preserver I had been thrown and how much sacrifice went into paying for private school. All I cared about was leaving my friends behind and being precluded from a fifth grade graduation with everyone I had grown up with.

For most of my early years, I was considered a smart kid. I was plagued with very persistent, sometimes severe asthma, with hospitalizations occurring at least once yearly. I missed a lot of school as a result. However, I could usually complete the work and pass my tests as if I had been there the whole time. I was performing better than many of the kids who had perfect attendance. Around the end of middle school, I started developing a mild disinterest in school. I found it slow and unnecessarily cumbersome. I vividly remember sitting in my seventh grade English class, eyes glazing over, as my teacher rambled on about diagramming sentences. Despite her insistence that this was important for our futures, I knew I would never diagram another sentence after I left her classroom. By the time I made it to high school, my days as the smart kid were numbered.

For high school, I attended the renowned Cass Technical High School, rejoining the public school system. It was one of the top three high schools in the city, along with Renaissance and Martin Luther King. Cass Tech was a heavyweight with many famous alumni. Diana Ross, Lily Tomlin, three beauty queens in Naima Mora, Kenya Moore, and Carole Gist, former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, rapper Big Sean, and even John DeLorean—yes that DeLorean from Back to the Future time machine fame—all passed through its doors. Even my mom, exponentially less famous, also graduated from Cass. It was a magnet school, meaning students didn’t have to be zoned to that particular school district to attend, provided they passed the mandatory entrance exam. I easily passed the test and gained admittance to the eight-floor behemoth.

My disinterest in school soured to disdain when the work became more difficult. I was also going through my awkward teenage years, and I didn’t feel like I fit in at all. I wasn’t bullied or ostracized; I just never found my crowd. I did not fit with the geeks or the gamers, the cool kids or the slackers, the class clowns or the jocks. I stayed to myself and just tried to keep my head down. I’d gone from Kevin Arnold to Charlie Brown in those years; always a day late, a dollar short, and never quite getting to kick the proverbial football. I earned myself an academic dismissal from Cass after my first year. I could not maintain the GPA necessary to continue enrollment.

I ended up at my neighborhood high school, my dad’s alma mater, Murray-Wright High School. Most of my friends from the neighborhood and some from elementary school attended Murray-Wright, so I was discernibly more comfortable with the social aspect. Despite these comforts, I knew I could not stay there. Besides the metal detectors, the clear backpacks, the gang squad, and the fight bell (yes, the school actually had a bell that produced two short dings when there was a fight in the hallway); I knew the work at Murray was way easier than the work at Cass. I did not feel adequately challenged, and deep down inside I knew I would not be prepared for the future I had in mind. Military recruiters were plentiful, but college recruiters were few and far between. My guidance counselor wasn’t much help as she appeared completely disinterested in helping me chart a collegiate path. I could almost feel her roll her eyes whenever I darkened her doorframe. Before I knew what Valium was, I was pretty sure she was on it. She sluggishly passed college pamphlets across her desk to address my questions. Cass had a stronger alumni network and a much more aggressive college prep agenda. The only way to get back to Cass was to achieve stellar grades while I was away. I didn’t have to work that hard to earn good grades at Murray, but I worked hard enough to become one of the few students to regain admittance to Cass.

Unfortunately, high school years are like dog years, and missing an entire year (especially sophomore year) is like missing seven. My year of easy work had put me behind academically once again. Socially, cliques had formed, and they were no longer accepting new applicants; romantic relationships had taken shape, and some kids had even secured prom dates already. It seemed that everyone had found their place except for me. I usually coalesced around a small but reliable group of friends in school, but I had difficulty finding that at Cass. My grades continued to be shaky, but mostly passing, for the duration of my high school career. One might even wonder how I got into college at all. Fortunately for me, I had been blessed with a penchant for taking standardized tests. They sink some and save others. Also, being poor—being poor helped—but more on that later. While my grades read like those of a stoner or a youth in rebellion, my test scores read like those of a kid with good attendance and a decent grasp on what was happening in class. My ACT scores were well above the Detroit average, and a few points above the national average as well. I also performed well on the state assessment exam, the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program), earning myself a scholarship in the process. The only test that really kicked my butt was the SAT, but it was unsurprising because I was woefully underprepared for it. Even so, I still managed to pull out a score that was exactly within the national average.

The college search and subsequent admissions process were always portrayed as dramatically as possible on TV and in movies. High school sweethearts would fret and then break up, agonizing over the fact that they weren’t accepted into the same school. Prospective college students would fight their parents because they wanted them to stay close or attend their alma maters, but the future collegiates wanted to move to the other side of the country. Some people anxiously checked the mailbox for that one, magical acceptance letter to Harvard or Yale or whichever institution they thought would change their lives. In most hood movies of the 1990s, making it to college was the pinnacle, the ultimate happily-ever-after scenario. It was often implied that the sheer desire to make something of oneself was enough to lift them out of poverty and their violent, gang-riddled neighborhoods. Ricky (Boyz in the Hood) was so close! The movies never went into detail about what happens if they were accepted into college and failed, or if they obtained a degree but found it was useless later on.

I skipped over most of the agony and acceptance letter angst, mostly because of a wonderful little concept called on-site admission. Cass Tech was drowning in college recruitment. An unending stream of recruiters from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), in-state schools, out-of-state schools, and a few private schools cycled in and out of the doors every semester. A Michigan Technological University recruiter happened to be in the neighborhood doing on-site admissions on a day and time I happened to be free. With on-site admission, the recruiter comes to your school, reviews your application and credentials, and tells you if you are a suitable candidate for admission, right at that very moment. This effectively waives the application fee for that school and negates the whole waiting-in-agony-by-the-mailbox scenario. I guess it’s done by email these days; my age is showing. I didn’t know anything about the school, so I consulted my guidance counselor, Mr. Dubuar, about it.

What about this school? I asked, pointing to a Michigan Tech brochure.

Ooh, he said, eyes wide with excitement. Good school. Very good school if you’re considering engineering or technical work. Not too many kids from Cass go up there—too cold for most of them. The ones who stay the course and complete their programs do very well in the end, though.

Mr. Dubuar rattled off a few names of previous students who went on to attend Michigan Tech, asking if I knew any of them. Maybe it was a good school, but I wasn’t fully convinced it was a good school for me.

"So, do you think I should apply?" I asked pointedly.

Yes, he said, now looking me in the eye. I think it would be good for you; less distraction up there.

I met with the school’s recruiter—a Black lady to my surprise—on an otherwise unremarkable day during my senior year. I did not know exactly where the school was, but I knew the farther away from Detroit you travel, the whiter it gets in Michigan. I pictured up north to be about as white as the snow that covered it every winter. Mrs. Danquah scribbled on my application and scrutinized my transcript, and then she skeptically asked, What’s this? as she circled the worst grades on my transcript.

Um... I said, not really sure how to explain it. I messed up in the beginning, but I made up for the classes that I failed. I’m actually retaking one now. You should see the replacement grades in the final transcript.

Hmmm. You’re going to have to do better than that in college, Mr. Warren, she said.

Wow, my transcript is bad, I thought to myself. Oh, please, God, if you’re listening, please let me get into at least one college. If I can’t get this admission right, to a school I’ve never even heard of, how will I