Swimming Across: A Memoir

by Andrew S. Grove

  I also met with a professor from the Math Department and, because the college required the study of a foreign language, with a professor from the Russian Department. I was told to come back the next day, when they would tell me where I stood. I hung around until Lajos was ready to go, and we repeated the long journey home.

  The next day, I again rode in with Lajos and went directly to the Chemistry Department for my results. I was pleasantly surprised. I got credit for a good number of chemistry courses and for five semesters of math, even though I had taken only two at the University of Budapest. I was told that I didn't need to take any more math at all. I also got credit for five semesters of Russian and again was told that I had fulfilled the foreign language requirement. The bottom line was that I could graduate as a chemist in one and a half years.

  I was stunned. I considered myself a beginning student in chemistry, having barely started my second year of university. I couldn't picture myself as a professional chemist in just a year and a half more of courses. But the Chemistry Department chair- man smilingly reassured me that I had not misunderstood. University education in Hungary was more advanced than here, he supposed.

  Then he explained that although I had received credit for a lot of science and math classes, I would need to take courses in English literature, American history, and political science. My eyes widened. I quickly calculated that if I subtracted the required courses that had nothing to do with chemistry from the total number of courses I could take in the year and a half left before getting my degree, I would have the opportunity to take only two or three more chemistry courses. I stuttered, “How can I be a chemist with only two or three more courses of chemistry?” The professor patiently explained that I would be a chemist, but to be a real chemist, I would have to go on to further study for a master's degree or, even better, a Ph.D. A master's degree would take one extra year; a Ph.D. would take two or three years beyond that.

  My aim was to acquire a profession that would enable me to become self-sufficient as soon as possible, so I could support myself and set aside enough money to help my parents get out of Hungary and join me in America. The picture that was unfolding was not what I expected.

  I started negotiating. Could I do away with the English literature, the political science, and those other courses that wouldn't help me become a better chemist and take more chemistry instead? The professor shook his head with a slight smile. “No,” he said. “Those courses are required for graduation.”

  I looked so crestfallen that he took pity on me. “If you want to take more scientific and technical courses, maybe you should switch your degree to chemical engineering,” he suggested. He reached behind his desk and pulled out a little booklet listing the courses required by some engineering school for graduation. He flipped through it, muttering the names of the courses. They all seemed strange and mysterious. I took that as a good sign. If I signed up for a big list of such strange courses, I felt I would learn something that would make me capable of useful work. I said that I would be interested in switching to chemical engineering.

  The professor sighed. Unfortunately, he explained, Brooklyn College did not have an Engineering Department. I asked who did. “Well,” he said, “there's a school not far from here, Brooklyn Poly. That's a very good engineering school. Would you like to talk to them?” I quickly said I would.

  He scribbled some directions on a piece of paper. Minutes later, having said good-bye to Lajos, I was on my way to Brooklyn Polytechnic. When I got there, I looked for the admissions office and in short order was sitting down with two admissions officers. I told them my story: I was a Hungarian refugee, a chemistry student, and I had a problem. They nodded their heads. They completely understood my predicament.

  Brooklyn Poly, they said, was a private school where you had to pay tuition if you did not have a scholarship. The school had created two scholarships for Hungarian refugees. Unfortunately, both had already been given out. I asked how much tuition cost. They said, “Two thousand dollars.” They might as well have told me it was two million. I stared at them, speechless.

  One of them said maybe I'd want to consider City College. It had a good engineering school and, like Brooklyn College, was free. I perked up. “Where is City College?” A few minutes later, I had another set of scribbled directions in my hand and was on my way again.

  I surfaced after a couple of long subway rides. It took me a few moments to get my bearings, then I started walking toward City College. I had been told that the subway station was ten city blocks from the college campus. After a couple of blocks, I realized that something was strange about my surroundings. I didn't see a single white face on the street. Everybody—storekeepers, passersby, children—was black. Since coming to New York, I'd seen plenty of black people, but I'd never been in a situation where everybody on the street, block after block, was black. I was very self-conscious about being different, but nobody paid any attention to me.

  After fifteen minutes of walking down the windy, wintry streets, I arrived at a group of ornate, old-fashioned buildings. I asked somebody for directions to City College. I was there, I was told. I asked to see someone in admissions and was directed to the office of the registrar. I told my well-worn story to the receptionist and was sent in to see a friendly older gentleman. He invited me to sit down and started asking the usual litany of questions: What courses had I taken, what grades had I received, and so on. I listed my courses one after the other and, with slight embarrassment, told him that I had received the highest grade, equivalent to A in America, in each of them. I was telling the truth, but I had no transcript, no proof of any kind. Would the gentleman think I was making this up? If he did, he didn't let on.

  That same afternoon, I was officially accepted as a student of the City College of New York in the Department of Chemical Engineering. I was placed in the category of upper sophomore, which meant that if I took a full load, I would graduate in three and a half more years. While here, too, I would have to take courses in English literature, political science, and such, I could see that I would have plenty of technical training before graduating. This was more like it.

  There was still the problem of money for books and to cover the cost of living while getting my degree. The registrar gentleman explained that the school had no cash scholarships, but that he understood that an organization called the World University Service gave cash stipends to Hungarian refugees. The moment I left his office, I was on my way again with yet another set of directions, this time to Manhattan.

  Before the afternoon ended, the World University Service had granted me a scholarship for the semester. It was not a whole lot, but it was still money. I no longer had to rely on an allowance from Lajos. In fact, by the time Lajos and Lenke arrived home from work and sat around the kitchen table as I recited the story of my day, I had figured that I should give them a third of my scholarship to defray the cost of my presence in their household. The rest would go for books and things.

  I would also be able to start saving to help my parents come to America. I had no idea how they would get out of Hungary in the first place or, if they did manage to get out of Hungary, how they could get to America. I figured that money would be needed in either case, so I resolved to save every dollar I could.

  Altogether it had been quite a day. Lajos and Lenke thought so, too. They were very proud of me. Late that night I sat down to report all of this in a letter to my parents. I felt quite proud of myself, too.

  My timing was fortuitous. Registration for classes at City College was to start in a few days. It took place in a gymnasium. Crowds of young people milled around, jostling in front of tables set up for different classes where administrative paperwork was being handed out and collected. The sound of everyone talking, occasionally shouting questions, and rattling papers echoed in the cavernous space, adding to the confusion. Even though I was wearing my American best, I was immediately identified as a Hungarian. Students and staff helped me line up at the right
places and fill out the right paperwork.

  At one point, a friendly staff person tripped over my name for the umpteenth time. “Look,” he said, “do you mind if I just call you Andy?” I assured him that I didn't mind at all. It had a good ring to it, coming from American mouths. By the end of the day, being called Andy sounded as natural as if this had been my name all my life.

  The registrar had told me which courses to take. I was surprised to find that there was no such thing as a single class of chemical engineers who attended all the courses together, as we did in Hungary. Each student had a different list of courses, and we moved from one class to another, sometimes with students from other classes, other times not. It was a very different system from the one I was used to. I was reminded of how I felt when I first saw skyscrapers; everything at first seemed overwhelming. But within a few days, I was running from class to class just like everyone else.

  Everything was different. Classes, students, and professors all were far more casual than in Hungary. In my very first class, I stood up when the professor entered the classroom. That was the custom in Hungary, but here I was the only one on my feet. All the other students turned and stared at me. I slumped back into my seat, my face turning red.

  Once the class got going, I peeked around. The other students were sprawled in their seats as if they were lounging at a party. Every now and then, they stuck their hands in the air and questioned something the professor said. That was another difference. In Hungary, you reserved your questions for the junior faculty, and you certainly never interrupted a lecture.

  The teachers were equally casual. To my amazement, the math teacher chewed gum all the time. I had a hard enough time understanding him in the first place; the gum certainly didn't help.

  The most important class, one that alone made up one-third of my course load, was a physics class. Unlike his counterpart in Hungary, the teacher spoke in a firm, loud voice. Having situated myself in the front row, I had no problem hearing him. That was the good news.

  The bad news was that at the end of the first class we were assigned thirty problems to solve before the next class, which was the next day. Thirty! The problems weren't terribly hard if you understood the language, but the language of mechanics included words that I had never encountered in Oscar Wilde. Without a dictionary, I didn't know what words like “vertical,” “horizontal,” and “perpendicular” meant, let alone “isosceles triangle.”

  As an engineering student, I also had to acquire an impressively complex slide rule. I had never seen a slide rule before and had to learn how to use it from scratch. I discovered that it contained an incredible wealth of information and, once I was skilled at it, allowed me to calculate much more rapidly than I could with plain pencil and paper. This turned out to be extremely useful with the many problems I had to solve for physics class.

  In addition to my technical classes, I also had to take courses in English composition and American history to make up for what I hadn't studied in what I still thought of as gymnasium, although I quickly learned it was called high school here. These courses were given at night for adult students who worked during the day. I took the technical courses that were part of the regular engineering curriculum in the morning and English and history at night.

  I had to study a lot for my technical courses. I tried to study in the library, but I couldn't concentrate with people milling around me. So after my morning classes were over, I would go back to the empty apartment, settle down at Paul's desk, and work until it was time to return to City College for my seven o'clock evening classes. After class ended, I would come back, turn on the lamp at Paul's desk, and, while he slept, study some more.

  The commute from my home to City College was a good forty-five minutes—a fifteen-minute walk to the subway, fifteen to twenty minutes on the subway, then another fifteen-minute walk to the campus. The three-hour commute, added to my study time, made for a long day.

  I used every minute to study, including the time I spent coming and going on the subway. Every once in a while, I rewarded myself by buying a paper cup filled with Coca-Cola from a machine in the subway station for five cents. But I tried not to do that too often because that would be five cents I wouldn't have for my parents.

  The walk from my home to the subway and from the subway to City College was miserable. It was winter and it was damp, windy, and cold, particularly during my evening trips. Sometimes rain or sleet drove into my face. Winter here felt much nastier than winter in Budapest.

  In addition to English composition and American history, I had to take physical education. There was no such thing at the University of Budapest. We started our first class by lining up in single file in order of descending height. To my chagrin, I found myself near the end of the line. In similar lineups in Hungary, I was always in the middle or close to the front. American boys were taller.

  I was an unenthusiastic participant. Throwing big, heavy balls to each other seemed utterly pointless to me. In one of my PE classes, I heard somebody talk about a fencing team. I was intrigued, and my intrigue got elevated to outright enthusiasm when I learned that if I joined the fencing team, I wouldn't have to come to PE. A couple of weeks into the semester, I went for a tryout. To my amazement, the coach put me on the varsity team and asked me to come to the next meet on the coming weekend. We went to New Jersey to fence against Rutgers University, and the coach had me lead off. I won my first bout, but it was downhill after that. I didn't win any more bouts at that meet and never got to lead off again. Being Hungarian took you only so far in the fencing world.

  The kids on my fencing team and, for that matter, most of the kids in my classes were all very friendly to me. My classmates and the other students called me Andy. Being called Andy made me feel that I was fitting in—at least, until I opened my mouth. My accent always made me stand out.

  I stood out another way, too. I had a hearing aid. It was a bone conduction device, which was very rare. The hearing aid had to press against the bone behind the ear, so there was a headset with a spring that pushed it against my skull. I wore it in class, then took it off as soon as class was over, partly because the pressure of the headset hurt my head and partly out of vanity. It was an odd-looking contraption and drew furtive glances.

  One way I did not stand out was by being a Jew. While I was visiting Brooklyn College, I had picked up a copy of the college newspaper. As I flipped through its pages, it struck me how many of the students' and professors' names were Jewish. I had a similar impression at City College. Many students and professors either had Jewish names or looked Jewish to my still-trained eyes. A couple of the students even asked me very matter-of-factly if I was Jewish. Once when I said yes, a couple of boys who were dressed in the manner of Orthodox Jews started to talk to me very enthusiastically, inviting me to join them in a group they belonged to. I didn't want to join. I said I was overwhelmed by my courses, which was absolutely true.

  One boy who was in a couple of my engineering classes took a particular interest in me. His name was Jerry Rosenthal. He was fresh from the army. While in the military, he had been stationed in Germany; his unit was mobilized during the Hungarian revolution when the United States was deciding whether it would participate on behalf of the Hungarians. Jerry was very aware of the Hungarian revolution and its aftermath, and we started to spend more and more time together, studying and talking. To my de- light, I discovered that he liked classical music. Not only that, his favorite opera was Don Giovanni.

  Jerry took me under his wing. He started working on my pronunciation with a vengeance. He decided to punch me in the shoulder every time I mispronounced a well-known word. I had to tolerate multiple punches in my shoulder before I learned to pronounce “book” correctly—I was pronouncing it “boook.” This was relatively easy. Learning to pronounce the “th” sound as in the words the and they was a lot harder. Lajos was no help. Although his English was fluent, he pronounced “the” and “they” as “duh” and “day.” Jerry
's fists had to work double time on the “th” sound. Some days I had a very sore arm, but my pronunciation improved rapidly.

  Jerry also helped me warm to the American political system. In spite of my deep suspicions about what Communist propaganda said about the United States, some of the Communist teachings must have taken root. I horrified Jerry when I casually mentioned that “of course” the American government was in the pockets of big business.

  Jerry argued with me vociferously but couldn't convince me. Then one day, he pulled out a copy of The New York Times and triumphantly waved an article in front of me. It reported on a Supreme Court decision forcing the DuPont Corporation to sell an interest they had in General Motors. If the Supreme Court were controlled by big business, he argued, how could they possibly rule against DuPont's interest? I grumbled skeptically, but I didn't have a good comeback.

  Another young man I also got to be friendly with was a veteran of the Korean War. He, too, was studying to become an engineer, and we were in some of the same classes. After a while, I worked up enough courage to ask him if it was true that American troops used bacterial warfare in Korea. He got extremely angry with me and shouted, “You know me well enough to know that I couldn't possibly do such a thing! How can you even ask such a preposterous question?” I hastily retreated, wondering if anything I had learned in Hungary about America and Americans was true.

  School was hard, but I thought I was coping well until my first big exam in my physics course. I had done reasonably well on all the homework, so I wasn't concerned. But when the exam came, I had two surprises. First, we had to finish the entire exam in fifty minutes. And second, we weren't allowed to open our books. There were no such tests in Hungary, and I was not used to having to memorize equations. I knew I did poorly, but I still wasn't prepared for the F that was written on the folded-over workbook that the instructor handed back at the next class. I was shocked and embarrassed. This had never happened to me before; I was used to being a straight A student. After class, the professor called out, “Gruff, come to my office this afternoon. I'd like to talk to you.”