<p>Let me preface this by saying that while I went to college a while ago, I'm not in AARP yet...although they keep on sending me stuff in the mail.</p>
<p>When I was in college, the basic scenario was go to class, do the homework, take the test, get the grade. Rinse and repeat.</p>
<p>My son, my first at college, has been there for a month, and several things have surprised me. He's adjusting well, but this new-fangled internet thing has changed things. Not only do you need to do all the above-mentioned things that I had to do, but you have to check email 3-4 times a day, because (1) professors email you saying things like "In my lecture today, when I said "as it approaches infinity...I meant as it approaches zero". (2) Dorm management wants you to come down and pick up your Amazon shipment that is cluttering up their offices. (3) Those student organizations you joined, are emailing you about coming out for a pizza night and face time with some professors. (4) Your online homework is due at midnight and here's the URL you'll need. (5) The university wants you to know your bill is ready for your purusal (That one immediately gets forwarded to me by the way).....</p>
<p>This has been a problem for my youngest, who started college this year. She’s having a hard time adjusting to using the old school technology of email, and wonders why everyone can’t just text her like a normal person should…</p>
<p>Well,
internet made it much easier for them. For once, most profs publish their class notes, so sometime taking notes or very good notes is almost optional (my D. still does, but having supplemental notes from prof himself is a huge plus). Second, they are given an option to take some tests on-line and improve their grades because everybody understands that it is open book type of test. Third, communication is much easier, email is a documenting all of communications. Obtaining everything, like Letter of Recommendation is so much easier. All kind of applications process… the list can go on and on. Well, I hope that my D. is checking her emails much more often than 3-4 times a day.</p>
<p>Yep. And more than once, my Dd was able to come home for winter break earlier than she otherwise would because she could email her papers to her profs- just like everyone who stayed behind.</p>
<p>You are right, but I also remember that when I had to sign up for classes, I was assigned a time to show up and then had to walk around the gym pulling cards from each department for classes I wanted. If I got to the end of the process and got to a class that wasn’t available, I had to reorganize my schedule and start the process over. </p>
<p>In addition, when I took a “Fortran” programming class, I had to write my program, go to the computer center and punch all of my programming cards and then submit the rubberbanded bundle to the usually extremely know-it-all computer guys who looked down on the rest of humanity and treated me like I was a total idiot if I asked a question. It took maybe 12 hours for them to run the program so that I could pick up the results, find an error and re-do the whole thing, sometimes 2 or 3 times. </p>
<p>^ I thought that I am the most ancient person here, you made me feel very young. No, I typed all my computer programs on some kind of station, was not PC at that time. I heard the horror stories from others about dropping program punch cards. I am lucky to never expience that. I was looked down many times, just shrugged it of and moved on. My first look down was because I was not able to type. Just tell it to anybody now - nobody will undertand how is it person cannot type. They can type now almost before they can speak.</p>
<p>I just got a student job working in central data processing, and put my course selection cards in front of everyone else after the sorts for honors and class level had occurred. ;)</p>
<p>One of my first college jobs at an engineering firm was babysitting a huge computer as punch cards went through. I had to make sure they didn’t jam. I also had to use a machine that would type out text on clear plastic that could then be pasted onto engineering drawings. It was a PITA to keep bubbles from forming underneat the plastic sheets, because if I didn’t, the text would look funny.</p>
<p>The existence of e-mail/Skype/cell phone is a mixed blessing for me. I LOVE how easy it is to contact DS. I HATE when I try to contact him and he doesn’t respond, though! I start worrying right away. I’ve been trying to touch base with him since Tuesday morning with no luck. Because of Skype on my computer screen, I can tell that he hasn’t been online at ALL when I have been (which is most of the time). I was ready to call the school, but then my mom said that very late last night, she got an e-mail reply from him. So at least I know he’s alive! Now I’m just annoyed with him for now answering e-mail/Skye/phone messages. Not hovering is so hard! I haven’t been successful yet.</p>
<p>Miami- Thanks for making me feel really old, but at least my kids assure me that I am. </p>
<p>Balthezar- A lot of people did do that but it was pretty competetive to get those jobs. My kids can’t fathom how we got thru college. My first calculator did the basics plus maybe square roots and cost something like $200- this was for the engineering program. </p>
<p>It is interesting to compare how things have changed. We have kids ranging from 26 down to 15, and it is amazing how things have changed even over that short time! I love Zangle as I can keep up with my high-schooler; he hates it as I am constantly asking him if he has turned in various posted assignments!</p>
<p>I remember in college chem lab, circa 1974, we would type our results for the “unknown” onto a keypunch card and then turn them in to class.</p>
<p>My first summer internship, at Hughes Aircraft, we had a Fortran machine that used punch cards, but we also had a terminal where we could use BASIC. It might have been an HP terminal (my memory is fuzzy), but I recall it had some sort of dial up modem where you actually called a number on the telephone then stuck the phone into some sort of cradle. All the engineers looked on in awe.</p>
<p>So maybe I’m the true geriatric around here.</p>
<p>When I was 19 and applying to Law School I started working for a lawyer who owned an insurance company. One of my many jobs was lugging countless boxes of the damnable punch cards from the completely glassed-in, enviromentally-controlled computer room to the paper re-cycler. Those suckers could get heavy. </p>
<p>35 years later I’m still with that lawyer but thankfully those dang cards are long gone. </p>
<p>Not all change is bad, even for those of us who resist it in most of its forms.</p>
<p>Had the same fun with Fortran right down to the same nasty guy behind the counter running the cards. But we usually had them back in less than half an hour. It was a timeless windowless bunker of a computer center with the requisite food machines–all junk. Thus began my general hatred for all IT people who apear to be direct offspring of the originals.</p>
<p>Every generation has this conversation, I think. My dad could not BELIEVE that I did not need a slide rule when I went off to college in 1980.</p>
<p>Ex-H, who is a few years older than I am, used to work in the computer center and handled those punch cards. Once for a particularly obnoxious student he played a joke where he “accidentally” knocked a box of punch cards off the counter that the student had just dropped off, and the cards went all over the floor. Student was panicked… but it was actually not his box, it was one ex-H had made up for the joke, and student’s box was safe behind the desk. Ex-H let him sweat for a few minutes, though.</p>
<p>By the time I went, we used terminals. But it was “cheaper” to use them at night (they let you have more processor time then), and of course you had to go to the lab to work on the terminals. So I was at the lab through most of the night more than once for programming classes. Yuck.</p>
<p>Wow–I worked at Hughes Aircraft during college, too. I remember the dial up terminals, and also the large room full of keypunch ladies–you’d give them your program written on a big sheet of paper with an 80 column grid and they’d make the cards.</p>
Small world. Not to entirely hijack the thread, but I worked for Hughes for many years - Culver City, El Segundo, Malibu, and finally Torrance. That was really a big employer back in its heyday.</p>
<p>Boy, I second all of the above. And, remember the big data storage reels? A huge room full of mainframes…with less computing power than today’s desktop-?</p>
<p>On the plus side: just discovered how willing Ds are to “chat/IM” with me via Facebook. One wont call, text, email or send a letter- but she sure does chat. On the minus side, I still don’t get the FERPA- considering we pay the bulk of the college costs, why should I need a kid’s permission to view her records? Oh, well.</p>
<p>^The huge room full of mainframes are still here. Though, it could be the only (not so huge) room in a world for international company. I have no idea where our Unix or mainframe is…might be in Germany, might be somewhere else.</p>
<p>For those of you with punch card memories - which I share - I had an awesome afternoon a couple of years ago where I was around for the start up of a new IBM mainframe - and we used a card reader to get the machine going. </p>
<p>Probably the last time I will ever get to see a card reader in action - I didn’t know they even existed anymore. My only regret was not having video of it!!!</p>