15 things I did as a college student in the 1980s that kids today wouldn't understand. This is spot-on...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/intel/the-struggles-of-going-to-college-in-the-1980s?dfaid=1&crtvid=0&dclid=1-1873234-8703601-119019828-291776580-0&sr_source=lift_zemanta&ver=c50_t3_i7&_z1_msid=outbrain&_z1_adgid=670#.ljapEL7JV

As a recent graduate of grad school only two of these applied to my time in college. 7 doesn't belong on this list since pranks still very much happen. 8 applied to the beginning of my college experience when we'd go over to the Blockbuster at University Plaza by UC but obviously that has changed. Though Red Box is still a popular option with college students and is pretty similar to the essence of a video rental store.

My God, how did you people do it?

I went to college in the 90s so I am somewhat between these two eras, but was my experience on each....

 

1.  I didn't have a desktop until my final year.  Before then, I used a 'Brother' word processing machine.

 

2.  I learned to type on a typewriter in HS, but haven't used one since.

 

3.  Disposable cameras were all the rage during my college years.  The sound of one manually rewinding brings me back

 

4.  Pretty sure we had a cordless telephone.  I did get a cell my last year in school.

 

5.  Yep.  Phone books were still in use.

 

6.  411 was definitely a tool

 

7.  Of course we did pranks (penny locking doors, putting the pitcher of water on top of the door, garbage cans full of water tipped against the door).  I'm sure kids still do.

 

8/9.  Video stores and VHS tapes were still a thing, although we'd rather spend our money on beer and DVDs came into play right around that time

 

10/11.  What's a library?  Encyclopedia?

 

12.  Stopped going to the arcade when I was 12

 

13.  Stopped eating at the dining hall after my freshman year

 

14.  Thank god for cable.  We had it

 

15.  Sniffing exams?  Weird

My God, how did you people do it?

 

I wasn't in college in the '80s, but in middle and high school in the '90s many of my sources were from the '70s. Not nearly enough books came out often enough to cover a lot of subjects. If got a book from 1988 in 1994 you felt like you had really fresh info. Teachers had to read papers about the same things over and over because that's what the school library had.

^ I do vaguely remember those days in elementary school. The first paper I ever wrote was in third grade and I wrote it on an electric type writer. We finally got a computer by the time I was in fourth grade though and never looked back

My God, how did you people do it?

 

I know you're throwing a quip at me, but I do think there's an element of serious thinking out there along these lines. I know because I wondered it 30 years ago. So here's the answer....

 

No one was sitting around the library in 1985 saying -- "This sucks. I can't believe we still have to use these card catalogs to find a book or use the phone book to call a friend! I can't wait until there's an Internet where we search for everything using our phones." If I said that back then, my friends would have thought I was a big-time sci-fi geek. But I think many of us who were paying attention to technology trends could see things were already headed in that direction. There were already computer bulletin boards you could access via 2400-baud modems, which we could do from a library and find some resources. But they were mostly lists of things. No documents or images could be shared by modems. They just weren't fast enough and computers didn't have enough RAM. But only computer geeks paid attention to this stuff back then. Yep, I was one. Now I resent new computers/innovations.

 

So 30 years from now, amid inventions and advancements you *might* be able to dream of today, some kid will ask you the same thing. Just as we did in the 1980s to those who were in college in the 1950s!

 

What we had in the 1980s was the greatest advancement in technology the world had ever seen. Just as it was in the 1970s. Just as it was in the 1960s. Just as it was....

 

You can't appreciate what you don't have yet. But you can appreciate what you have in comparison to what came before. As you get older, technology advancements are no longer exciting. Instead it starts to get annoying because your sense of time is compressed and it takes more effort to keep track of innovations and learn how to use them. As a 20-year-old, a year seems shorter than it did when you were 10 years old. By comparison, a year seems like five years by the time you're 40. Within that time compression, it gets harder to keep up with changes in technology, fashion, music, etc. So you begin to appreciate other elements in your life like family, friends, career, hobbies, etc. that don't change so quickly. Happens to most of us. :)

^ Was part quip, but also quite serious haha. All very true points. I just have to look back at the evolution of cell phones to see an example of that. Back in 2007 during my freshman year of college, I didn't have a smart phone and got along just fine. Now that I've had an iPhone for a number of years, it's difficult to remember the times before I could easily google something on my phone or look up directions via Google maps, even though it wasn't that long ago. I'm curious as to what I'll be saying in 2020 about "how I can't believe we didn't have _____ back in 2015!"

I remember having to go to the computer cluster with the dummy terminals connected to the mainframe to use this new technology called 'email'. I had one professor that used it to communicate to the class. I remember thinking what a PITA it was, becuase there was no slick interface yet. It was a black and white screen driven by command codes.

 

And I completely forgot having to go to the printer room and wait for someone to get me my print outs (that was in the comment section). What a pain!

^ Was part quip, but also quite serious haha. All very true points. I just have to look back at the evolution of cell phones to see an example of that. Back in 2007 during my freshman year of college, I didn't have a smart phone and got along just fine. Now that I've had an iPhone for a number of years, it's difficult to remember the times before I could easily google something on my phone or look up directions via Google maps, even though it wasn't that long ago. I'm curious as to what I'll be saying in 2020 about "how I can't believe we didn't have _____ back in 2015!"

 

Or try to imagine what you'll have in 2045. It seems so far away now, but after you reach it, you'll be amazed looking back at how fast it got there. In 1985, 2015 was the year Marty McFly drove the DeLorean to in order to meet his 48-year-old self in Back To The Future II. I also was 18 in 1985. So here I am that 48-year-old guy. I look back and think "that went quick!" The next 30 years are going to go even faster.

 

And to keep this on technology, look at all the stuff that was forecast in Back To The Future II (released 1989) to be here in 2015. Many of the things we have now weren't anticipated then. For example, the movie anticipated that instant communications would still involve paper -- ie: by fax (the "You're Fired!" fax). Who uses fax machines anymore?? The digital revolution was limited to CD players in the 1980s. And of course it assumed flying cars as did movies when my dad was a teenager in the 1940s. It's amazing how little has actually changed between the 1980s and today. My street in Lakewood looks the same. My condo (built in 1967) and much of my furniture looks pretty much the same. Sofas, beds, desks haven't changed much. TVs are bigger and have HD. We had cable TV and you can do that now or satellite (which was starting to appear in the late 1980s) or web TV now. Someone from the 1980s could get in a car today and be able to drive it with little trouble. The push-button ignition would give someone a moment of pause. And the information/navigation system would have been a bit bewildering. But I think someone would adjust pretty quickly -- except for my mother. She stared at a new universal remote control in the 1980s and couldn't figure out how to turn on a TV! So some people wouldn't know what to do. :)

The big differences between the 80s and now are that internships barely existed and that up through the late 90s students could totally screw around, accumulate almost zero debt, and get a professional job right after graduation.  Many people with philosophy degrees or similarly "useless" degrees were hired for ordinary jobs or interesting jobs well outside their degree.  Credit card companies hadn't started preying on college students so it was pretty much unheard of for anyone to emerge from college -- or even grad school -- with over $10,000 in combined student loan and credit card debt. 

 

The problem with the "internship" era is that people don't really learn much in these internships and so they're just participation ribbons.  The stakes got much higher in the late 90s when unpaid internships proliferated and so only students from wealthy families could do the glamorous unpaid internships in the expensive cities. 

How do people not learn much? It's real world experience in your field of study. Not only does it teach you whether or not you actually enjoy being a part of the field you're majoring in but most internships are far beyond the Hollywood portrayed "go and get the boss's coffee and dry cleaning" internships. I have yet to meet someone who had to do that in any field.

 

I did actual design work and interacted with clients and contractors on some of my first internships. I saw the real life implementation of what I was learning in my structural and construction classes and saw things I designed become something real that someone lived in and enjoyed.

 

Internships make what you are learning in school real and give you a better understanding of how to focus your education because you know what is important in the real world and how to apply what you're learning to a real job.

 

It's also significantly easier to get a post-graduation job when you already have real world experience and have networked and made connections in your field. It's all about who you know and internships can introduce you to a vast array of people without long-term job commitment.

 

I think your understanding of the importance of internships and what they do for students is a little off.

Internships were very common in the 1980s but we didn't call it that -- they were co-ops. In fact, I and many of my friends and classmates were enrolled in cooperative education programs where you could get course credit for working at an employer who was partnering with the university. You didn't get paid, but you also didn't have to pay either. I got 3 course credits for my co-op education which was the same as a full course. A three-credit course in the 1980s at Kent State University cost a couple hundred dollars, not including a textbook which added another $50-$100, if I remember correctly. So I saved that cost and still got a good grade!

A lot of managers use an intern to put pressure on established employees.  They talk up the intern, tell him what an outstanding job he's doing, and get him high-steppingand sticking his chest out and then give them some sort of task higher than an established employee to get the established employee pissed off.  They keep pecking away at the established employee until he asks for a transfer out of the dept or quits in a huff.  Someone is forced out in this or a similar manner if the manager perceives them to be a threat.  So being technically good at your job is often a disadvantage. 

KJP, UC is where I went and they're the originator of co-op education. My co-ops were all paid however. Which was extremely useful. I'd work for a quarter/semester and save up enough during that term to cover all my living expenses for the next term of classes.

 

Jake, that sounds less like reality and more like a conspiracy. Maybe it's just the field I'm in, but not once did I see anything like that occurring. Most firms I saw were actually quite critical of their co-op students/interns as a way of breaking them into the real world. The only times I was complimented were when I actually did something that stood out in a positive manner. But I was equally spoken to when I did something that wasn't in line with how a firm wanted their business to be handled. Hence the educational aspect of interning.

 

As far as I can tell now that I'm employed full time (at a firm I did multiple co-op terms with) and from what I have seen with peers and through talking to others, most places use co-op students to find future employees. They're affordable labor meaning if they don't work out it's not super detrimental to the business but if they prove themselves to be a useful asset they will reach out and keep in touch.

 

I did three internships with the firm I'm currently at and they reached out to me during my thesis year and offered me a position 9 months before graduation. Before I accepted they also offered me reference if I chose to leave the Cincinnati area. But if I was staying they wanted me.

 

The same thing happened with most of my peers. They either were offered a job through a firm they co-oped with or used the connections they made while on co-op as references to get jobs elsewhere.

The UC co-op program is extremely effective and should be used at many other schools.

 

But, many schools are in towns with no jobs. The schools in towns with no jobs would be very unhappy if co-op became the standard and would try to start an academic pissing match by saying kids that go to co-op schools are dumb work bots while the small-town schools create scholars.

So how about those comparisons of student life two to three decades ago vs today? :)

I was at UC in the 1980's and obviously had no computers, so after graduation since there was no Facebook or email, I lost track of almost everyone.  There was no pool or gym on campus (at least as far as I knew), grades were posted on a bulletin board by the professor's door, and I typed out my essays on electric typewriters that were available for free use in the libraries. We wrote handwritten letters to our friends while away on coop...we had landlines but didn't want to pay long-distance fees. Students smoked in studio all the time and no one gave it a second thought. Every Friday at 5pm students and professors would get a keg of beer and have beer and chips in the school courtyard.  Studio was not air conditioned and during summer sessions, pencil drawings got smeared with sweat.  Tuition was $640 per quarter, which you could earn by doing part-time work or co-op.  My first coop job paid $5.50/hr, but... I graduated with zero debt.

 

I was at UC in the 1980's and obviously had no computers, so after graduation since there was no Facebook or email, I lost track of almost everyone.  There was no pool or gym on campus (at least as far as I knew), grades were posted on a bulletin board by the professor's door, and I typed out my essays on electric typewriters that were available for free use in the libraries. We wrote handwritten letters to our friends while away on coop...we had landlines but didn't want to pay long-distance fees. Students smoked in studio all the time and no one gave it a second thought. Every Friday at 5pm students and professors would get a keg of beer and have beer and chips in the school courtyard.  Studio was not air conditioned and during summer sessions, pencil drawings got smeared with sweat.  Tuition was $640 per quarter, which you could earn by doing part-time work or co-op.  My first coop job paid $5.50/hr, but... I graduated with zero debt.

 

 

That last sentence sums up the biggest difference! The average first time co-op pay is probably about double that now, but at $11,000 a year for in-state tuition, the cost of going to school is 5 times that amount.

My first co-op paid $12/hr. which was pretty middle of the road. Some people got more but those were generally in more expensive cities so I came out ahead of my peers in terms of saving.

 

Not only is tuition way more now adjusted for inflation, but many majors now require more time to complete. In my field you used to go for five years and be good. Now many programs are 4 years of undergrad plus 2-3 years of grad school. And graduate school is insanely expensive. But if you don't do it you're not able to get licensed so you'll never advance to a level where you can do much more than live humbly forever.

A big difference the 80s and now is...coed dorms.  I think to some extent this was forced upon the schools but increasing enrollment as the women's movement pushing back against draconian visitation rules, etc. 

 

I remember visiting my aunt at Miami around 1985 and she was living in a dorm that had been a male dorm, so the bathroom only had 2 stalls but about 10 urinals.  It wasn't a big deal.  But today the dorms are so luxurious that such a situation is unfathomable. 

 

 

^In what way is that true? I lived in Daniels Hall and the bathrooms on each floor were the same. 6 stalls in each. No urinals so they could serve as either male or female. And 72 people lived on each floor. The same went for all the other older dorms on UC's campus which accounted for nearly everyone who lived on campus.

This was one of the old dorms at Miami that had been an all-boys dorm for 50~ years then suddenly switched to an all-girls dorm.

 

And the other huge issue is drinking in the dorms...when the drinking age changed to 21 in the late 80s everything changed with it.  That's when the universities stopped holding events that had kegs (beer kegs were often a *scheduled* part of dorm life and sanctioned university events).  OU's notorious Palmerfest was born in 1988 or 89 (whenever the age changed) as a replacement to OU's Springfest, which was held down on the riverbank.  For decades students had built rafts and floated in the Hocking River with beverages supplied by the university itself.  When it went non-alcoholic, residents of Palmer St. stepped up and scheduled the Fest which has continued for 25 years without interruption. 

 

So all drinking moved off-campus, and this happened:

 

And this:

 

 

A big difference the 80s and now is...coed dorms.  I think to some extent this was forced upon the schools but increasing enrollment as the women's movement pushing back against draconian visitation rules, etc. 

 

I remember visiting my aunt at Miami around 1985 and she was living in a dorm that had been a male dorm, so the bathroom only had 2 stalls but about 10 urinals.  It wasn't a big deal.  But today the dorms are so luxurious that such a situation is unfathomable. 

 

This.  Plus your comment on alcohol (more later).  We had small single rooms on southside, the guy across the hall from me's girlfriend basically lived there.  No one cared.    I was at a party in my cousin's dorm at Action U a few years later, and the state schools still had visiting hours and this surprised me.

 

I was very early 80s. 

 

Desktops?  Hell, we had a central computer lab with limited open hours and quotas on computer time and “cattle classes” for the requirements. The worst possible way to teach programming, and this was at a high end engineering school.  I didn’t develop my knack for it until we got a couple Commodore PCs for the department.

 

The two biggest differences, especially if you were living on campus, were “political correctness” and alcohol.  The former was virtually non-exist, the latter ubiquitous on the weekends (of varying length according to campus and time of year).

 

I was one of the founders of the YAF chapter, chaired the CRs at one point, and had a conservative column in the Observer.  My far left counterpart at the paper and the heads of most of the left leaning groups were all either friends or cordial acquaintances.  I hung out with the College Democrats chairman a lot, it helped that she was cute.    More than a few people thought we were dating, since we were both commuters and our SOs both lived elsewhere.  That was the atmosphere, people didn’t take each other’s opinions personally.  And yes, some debate did happen, though by today's standard it might be called "discussion".

 

Alcohol?  A few years ago one of the big fraternities got suspended for having alcohol at an off campus party.  Hell, circa 1982 they’d get grief for not having it at an on campus party.  Even official university functions served beer.  My senior year (IIRC) they didn’t serve it at the orientation party at the quad because the beer age had just gone to 19, but no one cared if you carried it and Papa Joe’s on the Hill actually sold out.

Internships were very common in the 1980s but we didn't call it that -- they were co-ops. In fact, I and many of my friends and classmates were enrolled in cooperative education programs where you could get course credit for working at an employer who was partnering with the university. You didn't get paid, but you also didn't have to pay either. I got 3 course credits for my co-op education which was the same as a full course. A three-credit course in the 1980s at Kent State University cost a couple hundred dollars, not including a textbook which added another $50-$100, if I remember correctly. So I saved that cost and still got a good grade!

 

Yeah, if there was one thing I would have done differently that would be it.    As it was, I ended up hiring a co-op student from my old department to put our procedures manual together.