Your On Fire correspondent does not have many friends. This is not a cry for sympathy or a plea for help but simply a statement of fact.
And the friends that he (or she) has managed to make and keep over the years are not necessarily the coolest people in the world.
But your popular On Fire correspondent has one friend who is cooler than Kanye West, ice cream and foreign films combined – Karsten Lutz.
Lutz is known for many things. In high school, everyone called him Bambi – not because his mother had died, but because he had skinny little legs and ran like a deer. The rest of Bambi’s body eventually caught up with those legs, however, and he went on to become the second-string tight end on the football team, even scoring a touchdown his senior year (in a game against the worst team in the district).
No one can say for sure if it is the touchdown that did it, but something changed in Karsten. Always really tall, he suddenly became extremely tan as well and began to describe his appearance to people as “like a Norse god.” And we cannot say for sure if it was because his tan, his height, his grades or his one touchdown, but for whatever reason the Stanford crew team asked him to row for them.
Not only did Karsten excel on the playing field, however, he also played the field and possessed an uncanny ability to get out of a bad situation just in the nick of time.
The first girl he dated is now 19, pregnant and engaged to a European guy (though the exact order in which all these events occurred is shrouded in mystery). He dodged that bullet.
The next fling was the valedictorian, president of the National Honor Society and captain of the lacrosse team. However, she had red hair and lots of opinions, and that relationship was doomed to fail almost before it began.
Not only was Karsten a star athlete and certified stud, but he was also a paragon of moral virtue. He served his local community as a lifeguard and was honored at the end of the summer of 2011 as the West University Lifeguard of the Year and given a tank-top with a picture of his face on the back.
“I always got better grades than him in calculus,” Katie Opila, a high school classmate of Karsten’s, said.
Karsten is a brother in the Kappa Sigma fraternity at Stanford, in addition to his duties on the crew team and his studies in mechanical engineering.
We at On Fire recently caught up to him and discussed with him a struggle that many Emory students face: namely, the difficulty of balancing life as a frat star, future Olympian and diligent student.
Emory Wheel: What is the most difficult thing about leading the triple life of a frat star, future Olympic athlete and engineering student?
Karsten Lutz: Time management is by far the most difficult. Gotta crush p-sets, practice, sleep and Natty light within a 24-hour day.
EW: Of those three aspects of your life, which one gets you the most girls, and why?
KL: Three-part answer. For just one night: athletics; for college: the frat life; that long-term investment six-foot-tall blonde dime piece that has seen “The Matrix” and wants to take the kids to soccer practice in a Porsche, not a mini-van: the engineering degree.
EW: What are the odds that you could make the Olympics if you completely dedicated yourself to the task?
KL: Stanford has a pretty good Olympic pipeline for rowing, so while small, it’s not unthinkable.
EW: What are the odds that you make the Olympics if you continue along your present trajectory?
KL: Zero, literally no chance.
EW: What is the hardest thing about being a frat star/future Olympian?
KL: Sleep deprivation and my quads.
EW: What advice do you have for all the kids out there who want to walk the fine line between athlete and frat star?
KL: Do not major in engineering. I would recommend enrolling in Alabama or Florida.
EW: What is your opinion of trickle-down economics? Can you give an example of this in your frat/athletic life?
KL: Perfect Frat Life example. Frats buy the kegs for all campus parties, and then the beer trickles down to even the lowliest freshmen. Everybody benefits.
Editor’s note: We at On Fire do not condone drinking by freshmen.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
