Dorms at my college were three stories: 1st floor for men, 3rd for women, and the 2nd floor depended on gender balance year to year. The year I lived on what was usually a guy’s floor, we had three urinals (useless but for the decorative element of large potted plants put in them by the RA) and a total of three toilet stalls in the communal bathroom. For 24 girls.
Drinking age was 21, and I was 17 when I started, so fortunately my college was the same as that of @washugrad:
Kegs were brought in every Friday and Saturday nights for university-sanctioned parties (Edwards Dorm Social! Pre-Med Honor Society Social! Swim/Dive Team Social!) For $2 (girls) or $3 (guys) you could drink unlimited beer, snack on pretzels and chips, and dance! You didn’t have to belong to the sponsoring group, just bring your ID and a couple of bucks.
Friday afternoons at 4 was movie comedy time. Into a dorm lounge was wheeled a giant TV (it seemed giant then; it was probably 60" :() and VCR so that 100+ students could watch Ghostbusters, Police Academy, Splash, etc., while drinking from one of the ever-present kegs supplied by Resident Life. I guess now that would be called “pre-gaming” with a handful of friends and Netflix.
Simpler, safer, more social times. It was not a large campus so everyone walked. And how inebriated can you really get on Busch, Schmidt’s or Ortlieb’s?
Another memory: salad dressing. In the late '70s low-fat, low-calorie food wasn’t much of a thing yet. Except for one ahead-of-its-time brand of salad dressing, Walden Farms, which many girls kept in their dorm fridge and carried into the dining hall. I can still picture the dinner queue, with every other girl carrying a bottle of Walden Farms.
Oh, and by the way, we just showed our ID cards. No swiping.
I remember my mom and brother would write to me weekly and I’d reply. We only did phone calls long distance maybe once/month and only talked for maybe 5 minutes.
I lived in the same dorm with a girl also from HI with the same first and last name as me. The person sorting the mail often put all our combined mail into her mailbox because she lived in a lower floor. We traded mailbox combinations so we could check to see whether any of the mail was misdelivered.
My “luggage” for college and law school was 4 Orange boxes. Two taped together holds a ton of stuff and is quite sturdy—lasted well for those 6 years. I would come every fall with those boxes and then take them back home every spring. I bought an inexpensive manual typewriter at a garage sale as an undergrad and made some money typing a bit for others.
Bought an old clunker bike for $20 or $30 and resold it for the same price when I moved away. No one ever wanted to steal it but it was reliable.
My local ATM allowed me to withdraw $5 at a time. I didn’t have much money, so it was a big deal (to me) when I did so. Gotta love a college town, where that $5 bought me two small pizzas and two quarts of Coke.
And good lord…waiting until Sunday pm for the cheapest long distance rates so I could talk to my girlfriend (and occasionally parents) was pure torture.
I remember how easy it was to get a credit card—you just signed up and could get free premiums—T-shirt, hat, toaster, etc. I kept track of my receipts and was amazed at merchants that NEVER got paid for things I charged.
My sophomore year roommate came back after winter break, decided she didn’t want to stay, and called a school in another state that had previously offered her a free ride to see if the offer still stood. It did, and she got herself a plane ticket and flew there. She told me to lie if her mother called and just say she was not there; she would tell her what she had done after she got to her new school. A week went by with her mother calling and me following her instructions. Finally her mother called at 4 in the morning and when I still said she wasn’t there, demanded to know where she was. I told her. Can’t imagine what that poor woman must have gone through. I remember her coming up to empty her daughter’s room. I imagine in the era of cell phones, my room mate could have strung her mother along for quite a bit longer! —or not, given how many parents seem to track their kids’ whereabouts on gps.
Oh my. I was at least 10 years out of college before they invented ATMs. But when I was in school, if you bought something – anything!! – at the local drug store, you could write a check for more than the amount and they’d give you your change in cash. That was our ATM machine. So I’d buy a bar of soap, write a $50 check, and get $49.50 back in change.
I used to track ALL my expenses on 3x5” file cards. One card would track an entire week of expenses. I did that for 6 years of school.
I stopped doing it for good once I started my full-time job upon graduation. Tracking expenses made me very aware of all expenses and there was pretty much no impulse spending. It was a useful exercise.
I remember getting hired as a proofreader for the school newspaper, but I actually ended up making most of my money as a typist. The old mainframe ended a file wherever the cursor was. Many times, an editor closed an article without moving the cursor to the end, thereby deleting part of the text. I got paid to type it all in again. And again, in a few cases.
Most of us were still using electric typewriters for our class papers, but I volunteered to type a friend’s thesis in the computer lab. When he went to print it, he discovered I had somehow toggled on Greek characters. Oops!
I flew alone to college in Southern California, where the temperature was about 150 degrees every day for the first week, and I took cold showers just to stay alive. Maybe that’s why I didn’t last there long, LOL. Pay phone down the hall, etc., etc. The people who hitchhiked must be older than me, because I’m pretty sure my freshman year was when the story was in the news of a young hitchhiker who had both her hands cut off by the person who picked her up. No hitchhiking for me. I did take a solo road trip by Greyhound that year, sleeping overnight on buses and in a Motel 6. Probably no one knew where I was.
I took the Greyhound bus as well. It was reliable. I also was fortunate to have had boyfriends who drove and had cars on campus. It was a great perk. I remember our student union at University of Oregon had a bowling alley in the student union. One of their bowlers who was famous was left-handed, so he had a bunch of the bowling balls drillver for left-handers. I never bowled as well before or since!
I remember our student union at University of Oregon had a bowling alley in the student union. One of their bowlers who was famous was left-handed, so he had a bunch of the bowling balls drillver for left-handers. I never bowled as well before or since!