The Sims and Louisiana Tech

I must start today by dedicating this post to my college roommates. You see, my junior year at Louisiana Tech, my roommates and I were consumed by The Sims. I probably should have been studying, but it was always more fun to watch SimStephanie study than to actually crack a book myself.

The four of us created our community, built homes and instead of conversing in real life, we'd hang out in the fictional world of The Sims. People would visit our dorm room just to create a character and play along. Pretty soon, you could find someone logged into the game round the clock.

Last night, as I was reading my new pop-culture fascination, "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," I was 23 pages into the book and about 3 pages into chapter two when Chuck Klosterman started talking about The Sims. Come to find out, Will Wright, the game's creator, spent two years studying at Louisiana Tech. While he never earned a degree from Tech, the fact that he went to school there makes me proud. Little did Wright know that 20 years later he'd be entertaining students on Tech campus.

In true Sims fashion, the scene pictured above borders on the reality of what took place in our Dudley dorm room that year:

1. One of my roommates always had a boy, although she was kind enough to never mug down in front of the rest of us.
2. Another roommate (Kate this is you), spent most of her time on the computer, chatting on Instant Messenger.
3. My third roommate was asleep most of the time, although I never saw her sleeping upright. But she was messy. Just like the sleeping Sim above. She could sleep easily even with a pile of trash on the floor next to her. This is why our living situation never worked out. She was always making messes and I was always cleaning them up.
4. That leaves me as the one in the corner working on a science project. It took me two tries to pass Biology, but I did conduct an scientific experiement by trying to grow a bonsai tree in our dorm room. Much like my biology grade, the seed never sprouted.