<p>Typing papers on the rental typewriters in the library–you put your dime in the slot and got 30 minutes.</p>
<p>Having only one athletic shoe (adidas) for ALL sports</p>
<p>Comparative mammalian physiology class did experiments on actual animals (shelter dogs), which dogs were euthanized after our lab (you won’t see that anymore)</p>
<p>33 cent a gallon gas</p>
<p>thumper1 - well, maybe you <em>can</em> join my Geezer Club. Re-checking your post, I can’t find any clues that you’re younger :eek:. Mezzomom’s coed dorms gave her away. But I might have been there with you. Definitely had the Indian print bedspreads, too.
Suddenly, the Geezer Club is sounding quite selective and chic. Proposed requirements for admission:[ul][<em>] Memory Lane entries pre-dating coed dorms;[</em>] no TVs in any rooms (we barely had enough electrical outlets for one lamp each - who needed them?); [*]“typing” papers using carbon paper or corrasable paper (white-out not yet invented, forget IBM Correcting Selectrics, “word processor” was a lady who worked in your father’s typing pool).[/ul] Meetings rotate between here and Sinners’ Alley. Archives of the club are on the “I knew I was old when” thread. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=31837[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=31837</a></p>
<p>Ellemenope, thanks for the reminder about P.E. - </p>
<p>matching, required P.E. uniforms!!! (navy blue stretch-knit shorts with white v-neck, sleeveless tops)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When did exactly this rule go away across the board anyways? When I first grauated high school, pretty much all colleges still had a semester of PE that was required, then when I went to the local community college they abolished the requirement around 2000, and they got rid of it in Kent sometimes in the 90s I think. (I took 3 credit hours of PE just because) But Baldwin Wallace still had the requirement when my ex went there in 1998-2002. I am confused. Also they really should bring back the requirement.</p>
<p>old geezer here…My freshman year I took bowling (an 8 am class…). It was a semester long course. I transferred to a school on quarters and was awarded 1 1/2 quarter credits of PE. Well…the requirement was 3 credits (a full year) which meant that I had to take 2 more credits…didn’t seem right to me. So I petitioned to have 1/2 credit of PE waived and the school actually granted the waiver. SO I was supposed to take one more quarter of PE. I kept putting it off and putting it off. My last quarter there, I finally signed up for judo. I was the only senior within miles of the required PE courses. Two weeks into the course the university DROPPED the PE requirment (ok…now get ready to do the math…that was in January of 1973). I immediately went to the drop/add office and asked if this change applied to graduating seniors…and they said YES…so I dropped the course. To this day, I am sure I was the only one in my graduating class who had not fulfilled the PE requirement as an undergrad. NOW this did come back to haunt me in 1976 when I completed my masters. I was the ONLY one in my class who was ineligible for teacher certification in Illinois because…you guessed it…I had NOT fulfilled the PE requirement. Oh well…I was returning to NH where that didn’t matter!!</p>
<p>More memories…</p>
<p>Keypunch cards
Tab
The FIRST time of the Atkins diet</p>
<p>
Yes, yes, yes… That was my diet during Senior Year, when I felt I was overweight at 108 lbs, and “needed” to lose weight in time for my days-after-graduation wedding.</p>
<p>OK, if thumper1 is a geezer, I guess I am, too, since we both appear to have graduated the same year.</p>
<p>I typed on a typewriter with carbon copies. One phone at the end of the hall. The only TV was the one in the dorm lounge. But we DID have coed dorms–it was California, so maybe we were ahead of the general trend. (started fall of '69)</p>
<p>Sophomore year things changed. Students were given permission to set up a coop house based on nonviolence. We took over a house from a defunct fraternity. Coop vegetarian cooking for 50, house meetings based on consensus decision making, homemade bread and granola, sit-ins at the student union, blocking draft boards in San Francisco and other Bay Area cities, all done nonviolently, of course. The only rule was that you had to participate in a cooking group once a week. My parents were VERY concerned, but I turned out OK. Never even smoked marijuana, although I became quite familiar with the smell. I met some wonderful people there.</p>
<p>Keypunch cards!!! My how times have changed.</p>
<p>Freshman beenies! “Tip it Frosh!”
Long lines to register for classes.
“loco parentis”
Pizza at 50 cents a slice.
The spring water fight.
The student strikes (Yes, 1970!)
a boring graduation speech</p>
<p>Not all PE requirements are in the past…S starts Cornell next month and he’s telling me about his PE requirements…</p>
<p>Interesting that CA had coed dorms in '69…U of I still didn’t have them when I graduated in '74 (Ok, can I still be a geezer even tho I just gave away just how geezerish I really am???)…</p>
<p>And yes I remember the carbon paper & whiteout (and those little pieces of paper you put into the typewriter and typed over your mistakes?)…how did we manage to graduate (w/a journalism degree no less!) w/out word processing???</p>
<p>More memories: 8-track tapes at the radio station (we called 'em “carts”–short for cartridge, I imagine, but don’t really remember)…“stacking album” stereo systems…standing in line at the Student Union to cash a $2 check (once per week…that was all the spending money I had–and I was no poorer than anyone else)…a $6 ticket on Amtrak to get home (Champaign to Chicago–about 120 miles)…and that was the expensive way to get there…we had phones in our rooms, though…all phone numbers began w/“332” and you could dial anywhere else on campus by 2-xxxx…road trips to other towns for concerts (lots to St Louis, cheaper concerts there than in Chgo…but lots of really good concerts in Champaign, too)…music ruled everything…life revolved around which band was playing where…my claim to fame: the night I “slept with” Jimmy Buffet (he was playing Champaign in his pre-super-star days, and spent the night at the group house I lived in…not w/me, not w/any one person (that I remember)…and the afternoon I hitched a ride from downtown Champaign and was picked up by REO SPeedwagon…at the time a local bar band…</p>
<p>Anti-war protests were weekly (at least)…I got to go by being the radio reporter and covering them…too “afraid” of my father to actually participate! The beginning of lessons in compromise…</p>
<p>Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, Atlas Shrugged…ideas…all night double-deck pinochle games while we dissected and saved the world…examined and understood (we thought) humanity…and dreaded the day when those profound friendships would degenerate into a Christmas card each year (and now I so treasure those Christmas cards from the 6 or so college friends w/whom I still exchange them!)…</p>
<p>Six glittering gold stars to Thumper1 for starting this thread!</p>
<p>Yes, the beanie. It’s coming back to me. Gah! But we didn’t call them beanies. There was another name. Something like a dink? A dirk? A duck? (No, that wasn’t it)</p>
<p>“Man on the floor!” called out by the maintenance man every morning. No male students allowed in freshman dorms. I can’t remember missing them!</p>
<p>All the paraphenalia that went with typing–whiteout, eraser tape. Ugh. Good riddance.</p>
<p>Indian bedspread. Check. Peasant blouse. Check. Fatigues. Check. Desert boots. Check. </p>
<p>TAB addicts. Lots in architecture school. Not me. TAB tasted like aluminum.</p>
<p>Iced coffee. Late nights at the cafe–which then necessitated 'all nighters".</p>
<p>The blonde Adonis types from Aruba. Campus hunks.</p>
<p>Midnight donut runs. The freshman “15”.</p>
<p>Pi Phi girls with their red Merc convertibles, Louis Vuitton steamer trunks and green facecream masks.</p>
<p>The joy of getting back to campus after a summer in prison–I mean home.</p>
<p>The comraderie of architecture school. Standing in front of a ‘jury’ with a model that was still wet with silver paint because I hadn’t really finished the project (DH came for a ‘visit’ ahem). Then the agony, fuelled by three days without sleep, hearing critics call the project “homogeneously the ugliest building we have ever seen”. I nervously touched the model and then my brow and then the model–not realizing that I was painting my face silver, a la the Tin Man.</p>
<p>Jmmom, can I tell my family that I have been officially declared a non-geezer? They probably won’t buy it; their “proof” of geezerdom is the AARP mailings I’ve been receiving since I was 30. We now have what my daughter has dubbed “the CC moment of the day” at dinner every night, when I share the wit and wisdom from this site. I’ll share your wisdom tomorrow and see what happens…</p>
<p>All this talk about cheap pizza, cheap gas, cheap train tickets, etc. reminds me that in college in 1970, a carton of cigarettes was $2.50.</p>
<p>“…and the afternoon I hitched a ride from downtown Champaign and was picked up by REO SPeedwagon…”</p>
<p>I actually remember hitchiking…</p>
<p>Would you ever pick up a hitchiker nowadays?</p>
<p>great string … and even better memories …</p>
<ul>
<li><p>discovering women … and that being a nice guy actually was helpful in college (unlike HS where it led to the dreaded “you’re like a brother to me” rejection)</p></li>
<li><p>sleeping out for hockey tickets (this was in upstate New York in the late fall)</p></li>
<li><p>almost flunking out from playing hearts and spades continuously for 2 years</p></li>
<li><p>the Dominoes pizza test … fly it like a frisbee and it stays together because it is basically cardboard … and then vultures who would appear trying to steal a slice.</p></li>
<li><p>Eating at “the truck” … usually at 2 am about half way through cramming for a test</p></li>
<li><p>Midnight snow storm touch football</p></li>
<li><p>Spring break in Florida … 3 guys - a van that got about 15 mpg - and $100 each for the trip and the week … great time.</p></li>
<li><p>Meeting a ton of just terrifc friends.</p></li>
<li><p>About 100 more things I should not repeat for the kids on CC … they can figure this stuff out for themselves when they get to college</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Another typewriter with carbon paper and indian print bedspread and hall phones here.</p>
<p>Our PE requirement included a swimming test - which I BARELY managed to pass. One stroke up for 25 yards, one different stroke back for 25 yards and then tread water for 5 minutes. I thought I"d drown and I invented some new stroke none of the testers had ever seen before.</p>
<p>Working at “student locator” - the on-campus information operator. Evidently before phone books were invented.</p>
<p>ACC football - our team was horrid so it was never a problem getting a seat and you had a lot of free space around you (unless you were with a frat guy on a date and then you had to share space with the kegs they always managed to smuggle in - I guess it was overlooked because it meant that at least somebody was there watching the game).</p>
<p>151 rum dacquiris - and the person who got so drunk they got sick always got their breakfast bought for them the next day at Steak & Eggs.</p>
<p>The one dorm room with the stereo freaks - HUGE speakers and multiple components and cinder block shelf units. Also, coincidentally, always the room with readily available marijuana.</p>
<p>All night spades games - I might miss those the most!</p>
<p>ONe more very personal memory: first boyfriend, whose bed I fell asleep in many, many nights with roommate across the room (nothing was going on - I was just falling asleep, I promise!). Lost touch with the boyfriend long time ago, but see said roommate ALL the time on TV - is now a big time TV news anchor. </p>
<p>ACtually, I would hope that our kids would read this - to realize that we really were young once and did some pretty amazing/wild stuff and that they don’t have a monopoly on that!</p>
<p>BC pill prescription filled at local Walgreen’s for $1.86. I remember once I filled it at a closer pharmacy and was so annoyed it was $2.50.</p>
<p>Speaking of prescriptions and kids finding out that we actually were young and did some stuff they wouldn’t believe - there was a certain pill with a capital P that involved major complications to obtain in my day 
- like finding a doctor who would even <em>consider</em> prescribing it to an unmarried young lady. Those doctor’s names were handed around in whispered conversations.</p>
<p>I remember flying Student Stand By. I don’t remember how much it cost, but it was VERY inexpensive (I seem to remember a $25 each way price)…and I always got a seat when flying student standby.</p>