“Mr. Bedi, do not talk while you’re taking this pop quiz,” the professor scolded. “If I see it again, I will throw you out of the classroom and give you an F on the quiz.”
I’d come to Tennessee thinking I would study for final exams only, and that is what I did. It’s what I’d done in India, and I did well there. So the night before my calculus exam, I studied Indian style, the way my friend Jasbir Singh Mann and I studied at Vishvakarma Institute. I laid my bedding, the bistra bandh, on the floor and studied my notes. I stayed awake the entire night and went to class the next day for the exam. Studying did not help me. Instead of learning the math formulas, I tried to memorize the practice problems in the book. I studied those problems so hard and was sure I would pass the exams. When the teachers posted grades on their classroom doors, I had received an F in Differential Integer Calculus, an incomplete in English for Foreigners because I was sick and missed the exam, and an X in Electricity and Magnetism for skipping the final. UT was tougher than I’d imagined.
Each week I mailed my parents a letter on aerogram paper for eleven cents. When an aerogram did not provide enough space for all I wanted to say, I used onion sheets, extremely thin sheets of paper that allowed me to write as much as I wanted for a cheap price. Several sheets of onion paper weighed the same amount as one aerogram, allowing me to write several extra pages for the same cost. I told my parents that school was tough and I had made many friends, but I did not tell them I was failing my classes or that I was dating American girls. I knew they would only worry about me, and there was nothing they could do, thousands of miles away in a tiny village.
Early in the spring quarter of 1962, the president of UT invited the foreign students to his home for snacks and soft drinks. He lived in a large brick mansion a few miles from campus. We all ate in a spacious dining room around a large polished table set with fancy china plates and shiny silverware. The president’s daughter, an attractive high school girl, ate with us. My Indian friends and I spent the afternoon flirting with her, hoping it would be our lucky day and at least one of us would score a date. I was determined, but the daughter politely ignored my overtures and those of the other students. After the evening snacks, we all stood outside on the front lawn, wearing our best suits. People gawked at us as they drove by, and we smiled and waved. Being an Indian in Tennessee was much like being a celebrity. No one had seen the likes of us before, and they’d slow down to get a good look at the brown-skinned foreigners smiling at them in their nice clothes.
Weeks earlier, I had taken part in a downtown fair with a friend I had met in Punjab shortly before traveling to the US. His name was Jagtar Singh Dhesi, and he arrived in Knoxville a few months after me. Meeting him in Punjab seemed like a good omen because he was planning to attend UT as well, and once he arrived, we rented a house together. At the fair, Dhesi and I, along with other foreign students, were asked to wear traditional Indian clothing and stand outside a booth so people could look at us, take pictures, and ask questions. We wore turbans and kurta pajamas, enjoying all the attention we received. The foreign student advisor, Nelson Nee, liked putting us on display because we made the university look even more prestigious.
As the year passed, my grades continued to suffer, especially in math. One day, Mohinder Sood’s brother, Ravinder, took me to a restaurant to help me study. He was in his late twenties and had received his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from UT in 1959. Currently, he worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority and was completing his master’s in mechanical engineering at UT. We sat down at a table with my book and pages of notes, which might as well have been chicken scratches for all I understood. Ravi picked up the top page of notes and began explaining the formulas. When he looked up at me and saw the blank look on my face, he stopped talking.
“Do you know calculus, Bedi?” he asked.
“What is that?” I asked.
Ravi’s mouth dropped open. “You are taking junior-level courses and you don’t know what calculus is? Bedi, you need to drop this class as soon as possible.”
I dropped the math course with no penalty and tried to focus on the remaining three courses. However, my grades did not improve, and my social life slowed down as well. I wrote to my cousin Ved for help and began applying to different schools. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be going anywhere else. UT was an easy school compared to the universities in the East, such as NYU, Columbia, and Yale, or the engineering schools, such as MIT and Virginia Tech. By the end of second quarter, I had received an Incomplete in Material of Engineering, a C in Highway Design, and an F in Fluid Mechanics.
Instead of registering for summer classes, I began looking for a job. Thinking it would be a good idea to find a civil engineering-related job, I responded to many ads on the bulletin board. To my surprise, a man in Atlanta called, asking if I could fly there for the interview.
“Come as quickly as possible,” he said. “I will reimburse you for all the expenses incurred for the interview.”
I purchased a round-trip air ticket for $120 and left the next day. The flight went through with
