Name: Richard Scott
Nickname: Dick
Hometown: Far Hills, N.J.
Major: Biology
Relationship Status: Taken
Favorite WFU Tradition: Late night Subway
Our final Campus Cutie of the year had us LOLing right out of our seats, collegiettes! You definitely won’t want to miss what this Theta Chi senior has to say about his time at Wake – reflective AND hilarious. Meet the shameless Richard “Dick” Scott!
HC (Her Campus): What would you say is your best quality?
RS (Richard Scott): My best quality would probably be outgoingness, because I’m pretty shameless all the time.
HC: What makes you tick?
RS: I have a crippling obsession with logistics. I usually like to have my entire week planned out by Sunday night, down to an hour. That’s probably what makes me tick the most.
HC: Describe your life story in one sentence.
RS: Oops.
HC: So if you could go back and do Wake all over again, would you?
RS: Oh heck yeah, are you kidding? In a heartbeat.
HC: What would you do differently?
RS: I would have gotten a more comfortable hat at the start of freshman year. I had a really ugly, really uncomfortable hat, but I’m really cheap, and I refused to buy a better one until it got stolen at a rush event during spring semester. It was this old, grungy Wake Forest hat my grandma gave me. And I wouldn’t have eaten so much Chick-fil-A freshman year. Other than that, I regret nothing at all.
HC: What are you most excited about for finally becoming an adult and living in the real world?
RS: I would not necessarily say I am becoming an adult so much as disguising myself as one. But I am most excited about making money instead of losing it, because I’d rather get paid than go into debt.
HC: Tell me more about your plans for after graduation.
RS: Well, I’m actually taking two more classes this summer. I’m taking Advanced Microbiology and General Chemistry II this summer. And in the fall, I’m beginning very basic graduate work while working as a molecular biologist at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
HC: Do you want to be a doctor one day?
RS: Yes, but not a real one – not like one of the good ones with an MD. I want to get a PhD and be a lot more pretentious and a lot less helpful.
HC: So tell me more about your interests and hobbies.
RS: Outside of attempting to stay employed, my biggest interest is probably music. I never really took lessons as a kid so, relative to age, I’m probably pretty far behind. But it’s all I do, more or less, in my spare time.
HC: What kind of music are you into?
RS: Sort of depends on the instrument. For rock music, I usually play either the electric guitar or electric bass. For jazz, I usually play a 6-string fretless bass. For classical, I’m a terrible pianist – like really bad – so I stick to classical guitar. Blues – I’ll play either a jazz bass or a Dobro. And then for folk, I stick with a mountain dulcimer or 8-string ukulele, since I’m not as good at the mandolin or banjo as I’d like to think I am.
HC: Wow! How’d you get into music? You practically sound like an expert!
RS: I was on a business trip with my dad to Hawaii, and the place we stayed at gave out free 20-minute ukulele lessons. They taught me the single most basic thing any musician can do, and that’s to hit a C chord on a ukulele. It’s literally one finger. And I was like, “Oh my God, this is the most incredible thing in the world!” And then it never really stopped.
HC: When did that happen?
RS: That was at the end of my junior year in high school.
HC: So did you just start picking up more instruments?
RS: Well it seemed like if I couldn’t get really, really good at any one, I should just get good enough at all of them. Just the shotgun approach.
HC: You must be very naturally gifted in music!
RS: Nah, I just practice a lot. I know because my younger sister is super musically gifted and she mops the floor with me, and has been doing so since she was four. So, I’m out of my league.
HC: Do you have any hidden talents?
RS: I did four and a half years of ballroom dancing, so I can secretly dance. That, and I can cook.
HC: What are you involved in on campus?
RS: The only thing I am involved with to any real significant degree is Theta Chi. Up until this semester, I used to play in various Wake jazz ensembles down in Scales, but I had to give that up for my last semester because my workload was too high. So I used to be involved in music, and now I’m just involved in Theta Chi.
HC: Have you ever held any leadership positions in Theta Chi?
RS: I used to be the Rush Chair – I served a full term as that. And up until [last month], when the elections changed, I was the Brotherhood Chairman.
HC: Tell me more about your fraternity. How would you say it has shaped your experience at Wake over that last four years?
RS: Well, Theta Chi on the whole, but specifically my pledge class and those who hang out with us, have absolutely been the best part of being at Wake. I’ve never had a loss for anything to do. Two weeks into pledging, you could put five people from my class in a completely empty room, and 10 minutes later everyone would be having a good time. The way it’s most shaped me is it’s just made things better. It’s also probably, inadvertently, forced me to be more responsible.
HC: So what’s your romance style?
RS: Goofy. I would never be like, “Oh, it’s the first date – let’s take this girl out to a fancy restaurant where we have to get all tarted up.” I’d be like, “Alright, we’re going to go mini golfing, and then we’re going to go to a restaurant that has a terrible theme and gimmicky stuff hanging off the walls.” I’m a big fan of the Rainforest Cafe or the Texas Roadhouse. More silly than serious.
HC: Is that how you seduced your girlfriend?
RS: Absolutely. 100 percent.
HC: So how did you guys meet?
RS: I met her maybe a month into freshman year. I lived in Johnson, but Johnson was not the place for me, so I always was in Luter, which was where she lived. And she already knew me as that guy who sat towards the front of her biology class and inadvertently asked dumb questions. So I’m not sure I gave the best first impression. But we became friends just because all my other friends lived in Luter, so we got introduced that way.
HC: So if you had to be a woman for a day, what would you do?
RS: Honestly, screw with my fraternity brothers. That’s exactly what I’d do for the day – just wear a GoPro on the side of my shoulder and record all of it.
HC: What’s your spirit animal and why?
RS: The wood pigeon. Hands down – didn’t even have to think about it. It is an endangered bird from New Zealand. It subsists almost entirely off of wineberries, but the way they ferment means their stomachs get super, super drunk, and they can’t fly. They fall off of branches. They make such horrible noises because they have gut problems that they used to be hunted by the sounds they made when they had digestive issues. I feel such a kinship to this animal.
HC: What advice do you have for the incoming freshman class of 2019?
RS: To go Greek. That would be the best advice I can give other than don’t skip class.
HC: What do you think is the best thing about the Greek system?
RS: Comraderie. It’s the stereotypical answer. It’s the stuff they want us to say at formal rush. It’s the stuff that nationals, if they were behind me monitoring everything I do, would want me to say. But it’s actually true. The actual relationships you gain with other people are the important part.
HC: When you come back to visit Wake in the future, what’s the first thing you’ll do?
RS: If people I’m friends with now are still attending, I’d probably go hang out with them. Other than that, I would probably go to the buildings on the science quad and yell at them for making me unhappy (laughs).
HC: And if you had to sum up your Wake experience in a song, what would it be?
RS: “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel.