@Parentof2014grad Kaypro was a client of my fledgling graphics biz back in the '80s. Did a brochure for their portable computer (actually quite revolutionary at that time) with a tiny budget. Gave my DH a six-pack to be the hand model showing him carrying the case. Had to retouch the bulging veins in his hand because that sucker was heavy … especially after multiple takes to get a swinging move in.
@aMacMom that’s great! I do remember the ads print ads that made that thing look deceptively light!
My parents owned a computer store and sold them. I used to go with my dad to the factory (?) in Solana Beach, For years after, their former clients would move on to the latest greatest machines and give my parents back those old Kaypros. We had a bunch in the garage to choose from whenever anyone needed a computer.
At my SEC flagship, it snowed once in my four years there. The storm was mostly ice, which completely shut down campus for three days. Sledding down Baxter Street on cafeteria trays or cardboard was epic.
I was an RA in a women’s dorm that had 24/7 male visitation, but guys couldn’t spend the night. Made enforcement somewhat problematic!
Sounds contradictory!
Yes, it was. The Graduate Resident supervising the RAs told us that as long as guys “didn’t bring a toothbrush or teddy bear,” it was ok. Tell that to the person who had to deal with a roommate and BF having fun in the wee hours (three feet away from her) when said person has finals in the am! I didn’t have any clout as RA, and the same thing happened to me while I was an RA.
It was typical of that school in the early 80s – hopelessly conflicted about sex and alcohol, wanting to assert that college students are adults, but knowing the overall value system was very conservative.
Such memories these vignettes evoke! Yes, we had the communal phone in the hall. A few girls did have private phones in the room. @thumper1 , I wish my roommate and I coordinated our room. It was like two different rooms —she had a sophisticated gold brushed velour for bed spread, I had a cutesy white chenille with pink flowers. The decor could not have been more different.
I had a new electric typewriter which was a graduation gift. I was wowed by the newly released HP calculator which was crazy expensive. Drinking she was 18, and a lot of the kids had big stereo systems The dining hall was just about the only game on campus. Now the school has rings of restaurants, many of the chains do that the option are many.
None of my kids chose to even consider applying there, though they are double legacy yes, I met DH there
A girl from my dorm told her mom that she needed few turtlenecks because it was getting cold. In a few days she received a large package with 10+ turtlenecks, one in each color. As a FA student, I was thinking “who lives like that.”
Fast forward…D1 let me know she was out of shoes while in college and L&T was having a major shoe sale (they were paying people to take their shoes kind of sale), so I bought her 10+ pairs of shoes (from casual to business).
After I made the purchase, it was a flash back to me.
I did the same thing at a Cal State school too, but it was around 1985. It never crossed my mind to use a public phone, and by some miracle I was never caught. I knew of several people using the code, including my friends at a University of California campus.
Early 1970’s. A dorm floor mate was exiting with chocolate brownies but knew me and refused to share- they contained more than just chocolate…
Pretty sure there were “special brownies” stories at many colleges, including ones where someone unwittingly ate some that were left out, felt strange, and went to the hospital to be diagnosed.
My teen years included the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and Women’s Lib as well as the drug scene. Watershed years. Oh- and the occasional streaker- remember those?
A pair of dormmates used masking tape for a segregation line down the middle of their split floor plan room as a joke- black/white, friendly with each other.
Women in my single gender low rise (4 stories) dorm started a 1950’s style panty raid. There was a men’s dorm just across the grass along with several other single gender dorms near (coed came the next year). The dorm was locked and housefellows (RA’s) from both dorms stood guard- the guys doing it did not appreciate the water thrown from windows. College kids do silly things.
Friends walked with a friend to the bus station for his draft physical trip (I had an exam) where another friend was holding a protest sign. The drafting ended just a few months later, thank goodness (my younger brother pointed out the draft was still in effect for a few more years).
Spring of freshman year I saw cops in full riot gear outside the Social Science building (no other name back in my time) but no demonstration occurred as was thought o happen that day. Things were a lot quieter tan just a few short years before. hint- my CC name.
No cell phones, computers et al. Could miss friends despite calling their dorm room phone. One cold, snowy winter night (morning?) I, a tall woman in a parka, was walking alone from a friend’s dorm to my own many blocks away on the 40,000 (?)student campus. I chose the main drag even though a bit longer figuring it was a bit safer. I saw two tall figures coming towards me on what was an otherwise totally deserted street- no cars or people. They got close and I said hi to two friends! The guy lived near me and was walking our mutual girl friend back the the dorm I had left another mutual girl friend at. It was about the halfway point so I and they continued- too late and cold to turn back for his comapny.
The kinds of things you do not tell your kids about until AFTER they finish college.
I love this thread!
Move-in day 1977, I can still picture the scene: Humongous stereo speakers emerge from every car, and students precariously carry their Pioneers and KLHs from curbside to dorm room. The stereo is king. Every student—bar none—has one. It’s our tech. Inside the dorm, dads (of girls) in every room work to connect receivers to tuners, turntables, cassette decks, and speakers.
Music blares all semester long. Students face their speakers out the windows. We hear The Who, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin in the open air, especially in the late afternoon and early evening. Also after midnight.
Hah! Not everybody. I had a little plastic turntable with two tiny plastic speakers. HS grad present from my aunt and uncle. (Mom’s present was the electric typewriter). No Dad in any case to put anything more complicated together. Me and Mom did the move-in. Last time she ever set foot on a campus i was attending (she never saw even once the college I transferred to.)
At my state flagship in the mid-80’s, our student ID number was our SSN. So, you’d go to the building where grades were posted, and there would be the printout, with hundreds of SSN’s and grades. And nobody gave it a second thought.
Fortunately UW has those ancient files from my era stored offsite and not computerized so our SSN plus a digit student ID’s are difficult to access. Computerized grade lists were posted alphabetically (?) by ID number. We had a friend from NJ whose ID did not start with the usual SSN digits we Wisconsinites had- easy to figure out his grade! The reason I know my SSN by heart is all those times I needed my student ID number decades ago.
btw- went on a trip several years ago where several days were spent with a group. UW-Madison has had an entire computer science building since the 1960’s. It is still there- the insides renovated over time as rooms were no longer needed those huge mainframes. I spoke with someone who could not major in CS in the early 1970’s because her MA flagship did not offer the major. She was a math major with CS courses as I recall.
College students today have nothing on us for effort spent registering for classes. We would get the paper Timetable, page through it and figure out possible class configurations. On our day/time slot we would go to the Red Gym (a historic building that still exists today and used for???) at the east end of campus and pick up our materials. We then went to each department’s building to stand in line at registration tables. I still remember telling the TA manning a Chemistry booth how I needed a certain full section in my major because of conflicts with other courses for the major- I got it. After going all over, up and down hills, sometimes returning to make changes, we returned the signed forms to the Fieldhouse at the west end of campus. It was cold and snowy in January.
I worked dorm food service my last three semesters. I still recall my hourly wage at the snack bar. $1.80 with $1.85 after 11:00 pm (extra for late hours). I think minimum wage back then was $1.50. There was a newspaper article the month before I started college (1971) that had a table of UW tuition (semester?) over time. $54 for my mom’s era, 10 times that for mine. And it was 10 times mine for son as I recall. Yes, we could earn instate public tuition with a summer job back then.
Waaaaaaaay back in the late 80s, bars in my college’s city would accept a college ID as proof of age. Our college IDs were so, uh, rudimentary, that we could alter our birth year with a pencil, slide it into the blurred plastic covered area of a wallet, and bar hop our way around town.
My Catholic mother, who attended an East Coast Catholic college in the 1950s, was shocked and appalled that my Catholic Jesuit college did not have curfews. I was shocked and appalled that this was once a thing. And then pointed out to her that our on-campus housing was converted apartments with men and women gasp living RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. ON THE SAME FLOOR. I thought she’d break her hand at the time from all the rosary clutching. LOL!
We are keeping all the talk very chaste about her grandson’s co-ed dorm at Penn State. 
Does anyone else who grew up writing essays longhand, then retyping them on the typewriter remember making the transition to a computer?
Our school got a computer lab at the end of my college career (Xywrite, anyone?) and you had to schedule a 2 hour slot to type your papers…that you’d written longhand in your dorm. After several iterations of this, I learned to think directly into the computer and not bother with the hand writing, but it took a while. A switch had to flip in my brain before I was able to do this. Now I cannot imagine doing it the old way. I even write condolence and thank you notes on my laptop, then copy them longhand into the card.
“My Catholic mother, who attended an East Coast Catholic college in the 1950s, was shocked and appalled that my Catholic Jesuit college did not have curfews. I was shocked and appalled that this was once a thing. And then pointed out to her that our on-campus housing was converted apartments with men and women gasp living RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. ON THE SAME FLOOR. I thought she’d break her hand at the time from all the rosary clutching. LOL!”
Went on a dorm tour at a big state school just a few years ago and one mom asked the tour guide what time girls had to be out of boys rooms. Tour guide was like “ what do mean?” And the mom said “ Well when is curfew”. And when your guide laughed and said that there of course wasn’t one, her kid was like “I TOLD you so” And the moms reaction was one of shock. But the real horrified look came when we saw a female student wrapped only in a towel came down the hall and walked over to a similarly garbed male student who both proceeded to enter the same room.