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<p>I haven’t experienced this as of yet. That sounds ludicrous to me. The teacher usually sends an email the day before in hopes we’d read it by the end of the night. It could be b/c I’d been attending a commuter college where it’s generally older students. <em>shrugs</em> I hope I don’t experience this when I start my new college this spring.</p>
<p>I recall the first “word processing” programs when I was in school writing a thesis. It was called “run-off” and you had to put special characters in for line break, paragraph breaks and formatting. The worst part was it was run on a main frame and the student account only allowed so much time per day. </p>
<p>At my first job, we had word processors who were making very good money and laughed at the small salaries we scientists made with our college degrees. Of course, their jobs became obsolete within a few years as we got terminals and then PCs. </p>
<p>The biggest difference to me is that kids almost all have TVs in their rooms. It was very unusual for there to be a TV in a dorm room and most kids did not spend much time watching. For big events, we went to the lounge or the student union.</p>
<p>I was initially concerned about everyone having their own TV, because I remember that’s how we socialized - kids went to the lounge to watch the TV and we had to negotiate what to watch (or more likely reserve the TV by hanging a sign on it: THIS TV RESERVED FOR FOOTBALL GAME MON 8pm or such). But the kids seem to socialize now by watching DVDs or playing video games in groups in each others rooms.</p>
<p>The change that I think has occurred just in the last 2 - 3 years is the ability to “meet” others from your incoming class and pick a roommate via Facebook. I think it’s creating an enormous pressure on kids. Old days - you accepted that the college would choose your roommate, unless you happened to meet someone compatible at orientation or decided to room with a hs friend (which EVERYONE would tell you was a bad idea). Now, the kids form FB groups - “Dream School Class of 2014!” and start evaluating each other online as potential roommates. Even kids who were willing to let the college assign a random roommate feel pressured to find someone to room with, because “everyone” else is picking their roommate, so who’s going to be left for the random roommate pool? The losers and wackos no one else wanted to live with. At least, that’s how the girls see it. (Guys, not so much). And then if you find someone you think you might be compatible with, how do you ask them if they want to room together? It’s like asking someone to be a prom date, only 20 times worse - “Hi, wanna live with me in a small space for the next 9 months?” I’m really glad I didn’t have to go thru that! (OTOH, D met her roommate online, then in person, and I’m so glad they did decide to room together. They are getting along great and have been a great support for each other.)</p>
<p>I think it’s interesting to see the changes in just 4 short years. S1 was “good to go” checking his college e-mail every other day or so, S2 says his profs e-mail “all the time.” </p>
<p>S1’s books ran to almost $2000 freshman years. This year around $600 and S2 freshman year books will be less than $800. The profs are using bound books much less. </p>
<p>S1’s college just this year moved from the cafeteria style to the “food station” style food. We did not see one college with S2 that didn’t have the food station style cafeteria.</p>
<p>S1 had to bring a lan cord as not all the dorms had wireless. S2 we did not visit one college that needed a lan cord.</p>
<p>Nary a climbing wall to be seen with S1. Climbing walls almost everywhere for S2.</p>
<p>No mandatory freshman alcohol awareness for S1. Class and on-line “homework” on alcohol awareness for S2.</p>
<p>Four short years.</p>
<p>
Where does he go - High Point?
I did do my master’s thesis on a pc, but it had a regular portable TV for a monitor and dual disk drives. The program was called Word Handler - the whole thing was the pc equivalent of a Model-T Ford.</p>
<p>I was talking to my mom the other day. She graduated HS in 1949 and I graduated in 1980 and it seems like the technology didn’t change so much as become refined during that time, i.e. color TV vs. 9" black and white, 33 rpm records vs. 78’s, transistor radios vs. table models. My S, however, graduated in 2010, and the technology he uses didn’t even exist when I was in high school. God only knows what we’ll have in 2040 …</p>
<p>This thread brings back lots of good memories. My first electronic music course consisted of a Moog synthesizer that used patch cords, oscillators controlled by dials, and reel-to-reel tape recorders. The keyboard could only play one note at a time, so multiple tracks had to be laid down, one over the other, and finally mixed down to a half-track recorder. The big problem was that I had to write down every dial location on a chart and, no matter how carefully you duplicated the dial settings, the next time back in the studio I (nor anyone else) could not duplicate the original sound. Basically, if you didn’t get the recording done the first time in the studio, your piece took on a new character with each recording session. Now it’s all done on computers which I remember as taking up the entire wall of the room back in my early college days. Yeah, college students have it very good these days.</p>
<p>I have to tell this story . . . I returned to college to get my Ph.D. awhile back and took some electronic music courses. The prof who taught the history of electronic music course happened to own a Moog synthesizer. One of his assignments was to have each of us attempt to create a piece of music on the Moog which he placed in the classroom for our use. Several seasoned electronic music students were fiddling around on the classroom computers during my Moog studio time. I walked in, sat down at the Moog, took out the patch cords, plugged them in, set the oscillators, and voila - out came sound. The guys sitting in the back of the room almost had a heart attack. I heard one of them say, “She got sound out of it. How did she do that?” Apparently, I was the only one able to make the thing work. Yep, sometimes it pays to be old. ;)</p>
<p>Aww the memories of punch card registration. It was great having a friend who worked registration and pulled my cards before it even started. For two years I only had classes three days a week with the best professors.</p>
<p>
I know nothing about music, but my friend is a musician and he is always talking about the “Mellotron”, which I gather was an old keyboard device that played a very brief magnetic tape associated with each key. For some reason he liked the way it sounded. I think I remember hearing some albums with this thing in the hippie days.</p>
<p>Going way back to page 1 of the thread … takeitallin, I recall things just the way you do! So you are not the only geezer on this forum!!</p>
<p>Moog synthesizer … blast from my past! When I went to “music camp” at Michigan State many moons ago we had to compose pieces using the Moog. I thought it was really fun! :)</p>
<p>OK you guys are mere children. When I was in college, the “pull the punch card from the department box” for registration didn’t’ happen til I was a upperclassman, and I used punch cards for my DISSERTATION (department didnt go to dumb terminals til I’d finished the first few runs of my data.Had to pick up the printouts (jobs) at the printers either across campus or at the med school library.</p>
<p>We had individual landline phones in our college dorm rooms only if you paid for it and arranged it with the local phone cop. Otherwise you shared the phone in the hall. Calls came in to a switchboard downstairs that were transferred up by the lady at the desk.</p>
<p>** Speaking of music-- I have an old vintage acoustic Goya guitar. Company was bought by Martin in the 70’s I believe. Anyone familiar with them? I was reading that Stevie Nicks loved her Goya!.</p>
<p>I’m with jym626. No punch cards here. I remember working on statistics problems using a very large mechanical adding machine type device. It was years before the calculator would arrive. The big innovation was typewriter correction tape. Most of us had access to mechanical typewriters, the electrics were in the administration offices.</p>
<p>Punch cards–yes–and wasn’t it horrible when someone’s program loop wouldn’t stop–and ran, and ran and ran…</p>
<p>or if someone dropped their stack…</p>
<p>How about having to dial the modem with the phone and put the phone into the coupling/rubber cups thingie on the desk…?</p>
<p>And if you types a paper–it was on a type writer and you had to count back half of the characters/spces to center your title blocks etc…
and used white out—</p>
<p>Memory typewriters were a big advancement when they came around…
after all–all of your time was spent in the librarey at card cataloges pulling books and writing notes --since the books culdn’t leave the building…</p>
<p>Then again–when I went to college–my stereo - with turn table and high tech cartridge needle went with me–Having the cassette player was really big time! so having both I had quite the sound system…</p>
<p>Hey–so if profs can change assignments–does that mean the way of a semester syllabus is long gone?</p>
<p>Ah, the dreaded “eternal do-loop of doom!”</p>
<p>I had to type my senior thesis on a typewriter. What a huge pain that was!!</p>
<p>My high school summer office job: manual typewriter, carbon paper to type invoices in triplicate…my own neat little 6-pack of colored correction fluid: sky-blue, canary-yellow…</p>
<p>I typed 105 words a minute (that’s touch-typing, with no mistakes.) You learned extreme accuracy when each typo meant advancing the roller, removing the whole set, including carbon paper, selecting the matching color of correction fluid, neatly painting over your mistake on original and all copies, re-aligning the set with carbon paper re-inserted, rolling the thing back into the typewriter…Gee, I miss those days. :)</p>