What Was Bill Gates Like During His Harvard Days? How Bill met future Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer: "Gates developed a rebellious academic pattern: He would not go to the lectures for any course in which he was enrolled, but he would audit classes that he was not taking. He followed this rule carefully. “By my sophomore year, I was auditing classes that met at the same time as my actual classes just to make sure I’d never make a mistake,” he recalled. “So I was this complete rejectionist.” He also took up poker with a vengeance. The games would last all night in one of the common rooms of Currier House, which became known as the Poker Room. His game of choice was Seven Card Stud, high low. A thousand dollars or more could be won or lost per night. Gates was better at assessing the cards than in reading the thoughts of his fellow players. “Bill had a monomaniacal quality,” Braiterman said. “He would focus on something and really stick with it.” At one point he gave Paul Allen his checkbook to try to stop himself from squandering more money, but he soon demanded it back. “He was getting some costly lessons in bluffing,” said Allen. “He’d win $300 one night and lose $600 the next. As Bill dropped thousands that fall, he kept telling me, ‘I’m getting better.’ ” In a graduate-level Economics 2010 class taught by Michael Spence, Gates met a student who lived down the hall from him at Currier House. Steve Ballmer was very different from Gates on the surface. He was big, boisterous, and gregarious, the type of campus enthusiast who seemed to join or lead every organization. He was in the Hasty Pudding Club, the manager of the football team, the publisher of the Advocate, and the advertising manager of the Crimson. What bound the two was their shared super-intensity. They would talk and argue and study together at high volume, each of them rocking back and forth. Then they would go see movies together. “We went and saw ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ which are only connected by the use of a common song,” said Gates. “And then we got to be super-good friends.”"
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 01:33:11 +0000
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