Remember Mexican dresses? I practically lived in one for years during college. So comfortable and pretty. I found one on our last cruise that I wear occasionally.
I went through ground school and took flying lessons when I was in grad school. I was doing that when I met DH. He says that’s one of the things that attracted him to me.
A little different sort of memory:
When I started college, the university president was a man named Corson. By the time I graduated, he had retired, and the new president was a man named Rhodes. (Some of you will know what college I’m talking about from the names, but it’s not really relevant.)
Many years later, my daughter became interested in the same college, and we went there for a visit. I was startled to learn that Corson and Rhodes were now the names of buildings.
It was the first time I ever felt old.
I, too, would use the pay phone on my floor in the dorm to call home on Sunday. I remember that Saturday night dinner in the dining hall was Salisbury steak. Which isn’t really steak, but ground beef with a brown gravy.
Dorms weren’t coed and you had to sign out in and out. (That wasn’t all four years.)
My husband remembers putting copies of his dissertation in the freezer. In case of a fire, it would survive. He also kept all his data (on computer punch cards) for years after he graduated. (This was the mid-70s).
Did y’all go off campus for meals at all? My college was in a small town that didn’t have a lot of choices beyond fast food at the time. However, Pizza Hut sold individual pizzas with up to two toppings for $1 on Thursday nights. I can still remember what all my friends liked on their mini pizzas. Getting a coke cost just as much as the pizza (obviously where they made their money). All restaurants - even McDonald’s took checks!
There was a local restaurant known for its sandwiches, desserts, and cheese dip, but for any nice dining we had to drive a bout 35 minutes to a city. That was a RARE occurrence. There were no choices for out-of-cafeteria dining on campus. Everyone had a 20-meal plan, and dinner was not served on Saturday nights. Cafeteria hours were limited as well. Two choices of entrees at meals. Friday lunch was either fish or liver. I think they dragged out the same pan of liver all four years that I was there - I knew two people who ate it. One professor and one friend. Sunday lunch in the cafeteria was always the same same meal (fried chicken or roast beef, baked potatoes, corn, green beans, rolls, apple pie or chocolate cake for dessert) and Sunday dinner was always “light” - grilled cheese, corn dogs, chips, etc.
Our dorm had a small kitchen but other than someone occasionally baking “tube” chocolate chip cookies, I don’t remember anyone using it.
I’m older than most of you – I started college in 1966. The dorm, of course, was only female, and men were not allowed above the first floor. We had to sign out if we left the dorm after 7:00 PM and we had a curfew – 11:00 PM on weekdays, 2:00 AM on Fridays and Saturdays. If you were late, you accumulated “late minutes”; if you got more than 15 late minutes, you weren’t allowed to leave the dorm for a couple of nights.
I was too stupid to realize that the solution to all that was simply to not sign out in the first place. Others were not so stupid.
I graduated from a midwestern state public U, not the flagship, but part of the state system. Mine was well known within the state system for the Agriculture and Education departments. Ag. Econ., Large Animal Science with a Cattle or Horse emphasis, Pre-Vet, Plant Science majors and tons of future teachers filled the dorms.
I wonder how things are there now, what with the ongoing death of family owned dairy farms in that state. I haven’t been back to the campus since my husband and I left the state back in '83.
A few years ago my son and his GF attended a wedding near my old college and took a side trip to look at the campus. There were new buildings, but our old dorms were unchanged.
All those farm kids on campus made a distinct imprint on everything: foods served were very traditionally midwestern farm centric. There were farm trucks in the parking lots, a place on campus to store shot guns etc., because some of those kids went hunting during duck and deer season, and you might walk into a discussion about proper techniques for clipping show cows in the student union building. The Ag fraternity was by far the largest on campus. For years my future sister in law was featured in campus advertising literature - in a photo with her forearem up a horse’s v***** palpating to age a pregnancy. (Large Animal Science with a Horse Emphasis Major. She still works with horses.)
It never occured to me how odd this campus was (in the rarified world of CC) until my own oldest started looking at colleges a dozen years ago here in the Mid Atlantic states.
Slide rules
Punch cards (my p chem class and those punch cards? A nightmare)
Hall phone
One TV per dorm (and as @privatebanker said, everyone gathered around at 3:00 to watch “General Hospital.”)
One microwave per dorm - and microwave popcorn? Put some regular popcorn in a paper bag, roll up the top, put it in the microwave - Voila! Burnt popcorn!
And a typewriter? Ha! I was an English major who didn’t own a typewriter and didn’t even know how to type. My professors accepted handwritten papers. Granted, my printing is really good, but still … the market for scribes and scriveners isn’t that great.
Foosball in the lobby. My roommate could beat the pants off the guys in foosball. Tab to drink.
My freshman year was single sex by floor. Sophomore year both guys and girls on the same floor. I don’t know how I got that past my parents!
I still have dreams often that I am either walking to class with no shoes (or not fully clothed!) and dreams that I realize towards the end of a semester that I totally forgot to attend a class I was scheduled for!
My HS graduation present was a fancy Smith Corona Correctronic typewriter, with the correction tape that you could slot in and out. I made extra money typing for a bunch of guys. The best paying one later went on to become a well-known Broadway actor.
Payphone down the hall; when the phone rang, the nearest girl would answer and yell down the hall for whoever it was for. If they weren’t in, she’d write a message on the whiteboard on their door. (That’s how I found out I was going to be able to transfer “your brother called–you got into Michigan!”)
I started at a tiny rural college. Orientation was a Miller Beerwagon in the fire lane behind frat row… I’d come from a graduating class bigger than the entire school, just didn’t work for me. Almost everyone I was friends with transferred or dropped out.
A few years ago, two college friends and I did a memory lane trip to our undergrad campus. Two of us hadn’t been back for over 40 years. When we were students, the downtown was a combo of pizza places and bars. The drinking age when we started was 18.
The downtown now is great…a variety of ethnic restaurants (modestly priced too), a microbrewery which we think was the only “bar”, and the pizza places are definitely more varied in their offerings. There is even a parking garage.
Lots of new construction. The place looks fantastic!!
Happily, the college green hadn’t changed at all, except for one building that was torn down a year after we graduated. Of course, that was where put Major was! But the new facilities are wayyy better.
I worked my way through college working for folks who owned several bars and pizza places. They were terrific to me, giving me hours whenever I needed them.
I tried to convince one of my kids to apply there…but it was a no go. I will say, it’s not on the beaten path, but I loved the somewhat rural location.
I had a manual typewriter because I couldn’t afford to replace it with a more expensive electric one.
Toward the end of the second semester of my freshman year, the night before the term papers for a very popular psychology course were due, there was a power failure that lasted many hours. I had already finished my paper, but others had not, and they signed up to borrow my typewriter, one after the other. Eventually, as it got dark and hard to type, people became frantic. Our RA saw what was happening and called the TA, who called the professor and got everyone a one-day extension on the paper, thus ending the crisis.
I wonder what happens during power failures now.
I remember one power failure while at college. I had the only windup alarm clock in the dorm, so I had to wake up everyone else!
I remember first week as a freshman applying for a credit card (company had set up a table). At that time they’d give everyone who signed up a card with no need for any financial history. Now that I got DS19 a card recently I laugh how things have changed.
I got an electric typewriter (maybe an Olivetti) before I left for college.
Meal plan was mandatory freshman year only, but we did alot of cooking to avoid the institutional food. I had a hot pot, hot plate, and, best of all, my mother’s electric skillet. I don’t think we were supposed to cook in our rooms, but we did. For more complicated meals, we’d cook in the hall lounge.
When we were downsizing, I still found the computer punch cards from my dissertation. That was in the mid-80’s, so as an undergrad, we definitely used them.
The overriding image from undergrad is waiting in line. In line to register for classes; in line to get tickets to movies or concerts; in line to apply for dorm rooms, etc., etc.
Since most papers now are submitted electronically…if this is a widespread power failure, one would think the profs would know!
Our dining halls put on a huge spread all evenings during exams. Lots of foods that we could either eat there or take to go!
I had to stand in line at the local phone company in our little VA town for two hours to secure a phone for our freshman dorm room in 1986. I still remember the company: Eatel. I also remember that we were legally entitled to register to vote after a period of time, but the powers that be in the little town did not want the college students to determine the local elections (the town tripled in size when our college and an adjoining college were in session). So registration was an oblique process where a little old lady would appear at different places around town at odd times and days, and only the full time residents seemed to know the schedule.
The first time I ever saw my school was when my parents dropped me off. Driving into town past cornfield after cornfield. Only a phone in the hallway, collect calls only. I was forbidden to call unless a true emergency - my parents called at a prearranged time on Sunday. I had an IBM Selectric which made me very popular. I was nervous and terrified- there were four of us in a room intended for three on an all girls floor. Remarkably we were a tight knit group and many of us have stayed close, 30 odd years later.
I’ve had more than one professor state in the syllabus something to the effect of “Assisgnments are due by XX:XX via drop box. Please plan accordingly since your transmission issues are not my issue.” Granted we never had a blackout, which hopefully would have gotten a reprieve.
Still do, at least mine did/does.
I bought a book from a friend and made the check payable to [FName] Pain in the Ass {LName], i.e. Jen Pain in the Ass Smith. The bank on campus made her sign it that way 
And not my story, but a friend. Her last name was Weed and her housemate’s was Moore. Everyone called it the More Weed House.
First weekend freshman year, the RA’s in my dorm bought bunch of kegs from the distributor and we had a “welcome to college” keg party on the quad in front of our dorm.