<p>I did research by going to the library for hours.
And I couldn’t wait to graduate and get a job, which I got a couple of weeks after graduating. Nobody that I knew took time off and went to Europe.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>My girlfriends and I took aerobics (not for credit) on a concrete surface. This was before low-impact aerobics was discovered - it was all high-impact. Soundtrack: Eurythmics, Cyndi Lauper, Pretenders, Madonna and Talking Heads. “Sisters are doing it for themselves.” </p>
<p>We stayed up late to watch this funny young guy called David Letterman.</p>
<p>We still watched the Miss America pageant.</p>
<p>We still wore pantyhose and slips when we dressed up.</p>
<p>Our parents really had very little contact with us during the school year except for the Sunday 10-minute phone calls (“get off the phone, darling, this is costing a fortune”) and then seeing us at school holidays :-). </p>
<p>I vaguely remember one Parents Weekend, but it was just “ok, here’s a weekend for your parents to come up.” I don’t recall any special activities being planned. I remember my mother being outraged that my professors weren’t wearing tweed jackets with elbow patches to class, that they were in jeans and shirts like the rest of us. For all that money they were paying!</p>
<p>Legwarmers. Ah, legwarmers. In sorority colors, preferably. In my case, maroon. </p>
<p>And Bermuda bag covers that we buttoned on and off to match our outfits. Mine were monogrammed because my mother loved me :-)</p>
<p>Student protests were very common–but never, ever unless it was warm outside.</p>
<p>We had maids to clean our rooms twice a week as part of our room and board.</p>
<p>There were less than 10 Asians in my class of 600.</p>
<p>We ordered pizza to share (no one knew what sushi was back then).</p>
<p>1.Student strikes. Graduate teaching assistant strikes.
2.Protests and “occupying” the administration building. The quotation marks are because the administration had learned to just get up, leave, let us have the building and all the wind went out of our sails without confrontation.
3. Marijuana possession was a $5 ticket in Ann Arbor
4. Listening to the Watergate hearings over the summer (I had a job painting apartments; I heard every word from my transistor radio)
5. Resignations of Agnew and then Nixon announced in the study room of the dorm by a student carying a sign (the study room was supposed to be silent).
6. Fraternities fell on such hard times that they rented rooms to outsiders.</p>
<p>Kids with long hair getting harassed by kids who would have long hair 10 years later --and earrings would have gotten you beat upby ids who are now 60 year olds with earrings</p>
<p>-$150 TI calculator as HS grad present
-$2.25 work study job on campus, which was a big raise from $1/hr babysitting
-$4000/yr tuition at college with full tuition FA for father’s $14000/yr salary (corresponds to $40,000 FA for $140,000 income)
-received a radio jr yr for dorm room ( I was poor!)
-traveled to college by Greyhound bus
-applied to 3 colleges, Columbia, U Chicago and RPI and was accepted at all 3
-a student today with my stats MIGHT get accepted at one of those 3
-took a typewriter to college
-learned Fortran programming on punch cards
-computer science wasn’t a major, but a few classes within EE</p>
<p>Then:
In HS, I took the “college prep” curriculum. It was the 70’s: I was permitted to take 4 literature classes senior year.</p>
<p>My father told me I was going to attend a state school.</p>
<p>I “knew” that it had to be the flagship. I applied there. Someone told me I should apply to more than one school, so I applied to another. I don’t think my parents ever saw either application or knew much about it.</p>
<p>I saw the flagship for the first time when parents dropped me off for orientation. We lived only 45 minutes away.</p>
<p>Now:
I helped my son tease apart the course requirements and scheduling issues to formulate a HS course plan. I helped son research colleges and universities. We visited quite a few. I was there as a sounding board for essay topics and as proof reader. </p>
<p>He also applied to the same state flagship.</p>
<p>There is no way he could have gotten into ANY of the schools to which he applied if he had had my High School transcript!</p>
<p>I never took an SAT test - because it was too expensive.</p>
<p>In a surveying and aerial photography class we used US Air force satellite photos that were still officially classified (the photos were passed out and collected for each class) because the resolution was so clear that you could make out a building and even a car if you looked through a stereoscopic viewer.</p>
<p>I went to an Aggie and half the campus was shared with Dairy Cows…</p>
<p>The only college research tool was the Barron’s Guide</p>
<p>Didn’t have the internet, applied to two colleges and got into both, essay was short and sweet handwritten, tuition was $250 per quarter and only paid $25 because of my scholarship. Never heard of the Barron’s Guide. lol I’m really ancient. That’s what happens when you have your first child at the age of 40.</p>
<p>My Russian-born grandfather bought me a manual typewriter with Hebrew letters that typed from right to left. For the return sweep, I swung out my right hand and hit that carriage out leftward, BING! </p>
<p>Unfortunately all my college classes were in English, but my grandfather was so proud to send his only granddaughter to a college. I typed the thank you note to him in Yiddish on the typewriter. Maybe he thought I was going to a girls’ yeshiva. Anyway, he was a very nice man.</p>
<p>Geez, you guys are bringing back memories. Fortran, punch cards, walking from the building where the computers were across campus to the building where the print-outs were handed out. Having a “Last Episode of M<em>A</em>S*H” party in my dorm. Having the “standard dorm room decor” of milk crates and old construction site boards, stop signs and street signs that I somehow “found” lying in the street, and an orange traffic cone or two (that made great party hats). Judging someone’s “cool-ness” by how big their speakers were instead of how small their ipod is. And if you wanted to play a video game, you went to the main drag and waited in line to stand by a huge machine. Now you can play those same games on your cell phone!</p>
<p>ahhh, I forgot the PAC-MAN machine in the on-campus pub…oh and foosball…</p>
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</p>
<p>LOL! I remember that too, very well!</p>
<p>Also watching Michael Jackson do the Moonwalk for the first time at the music awards show. </p>
<p>If you needed cash, you went to the bursar’s office and wrote a check for cash. ATM’s were just starting up.</p>
<p>BUandBC82, in the early 80s we watched General Hospital in the lounge, and it was Luke and Laura that had the big wedding. It was a major event. I will never forget the day Reagan was shot, and GH was rudely interrupted. Al Haig claimed he was “in charge” and all the girls in the lounge hollered at the TV that he WAS NOT and should read the constitution!</p>
<p>My roommate and I were popular because we had the popcorn machine that looked like a bubble. You had to actually pour the oil and popcorn into it, and the butter would melt in from the top of the dome! No microwave ovens!</p>
<p>MIdwestmom, I haven’t heard the term “reverse Polish” in decades! Yeah, I loved the HP calculators. I had a tough time converting to the straightforward ones since I was so used to the reverse Polish.</p>
<p>I did the math for my chemistry class on a slide rule. One guy in the class had a calculator and he had to sit near a wall to plug it in. We were all so envious. Where did he get that thing?</p>
<p>I remember doing data analysis by entering in data like so …</p>
<p>1 2 3 4 5
2 3 4 2 1
1 9 2 3 5
(etc.)</p>
<p>for hundreds of lines, and then regressing one column against the others. And if you screwed up ONE number, you were completely hosed, and you had no way of knowing. I actually paid someone to enter all the data for me for my senior thesis! And data, of course, was all from books, and you had to make whatever adjustments for time frames, missing data, that you could.</p>
<p>And nowadays … this would be as simple as copying data from one excel into another excel and pushing one or two buttons. What literally took days takes minutes.</p>
<p>We had the final episode of Mash party in our apartment.</p>
<p>My roommate and I had poptarts and Tab for breakfast!</p>