I Survived!

 I have survived my first college class in thirty some odd years!  I took the final tonight, turned in my book and left...went to Sonic to celebrate, too!  I'll get the grade next week and then start the next class the following week.  So I'm going to get used to this routine, I hope.  But this is something I must do, and I want to do, so on I press.

But I do have to comment on some of the differences between the "old" days and the modern times.

In the "old" days grades were posted using your Social Security number.  In fact everything was done by your SS#.  I thought nothing of giving it out to a classmate to look up something for me.  It was just the way we were identified.

There was no internet.  Yes, there was no internet.  PC's were still a year or two away and then they would be a novelty.

I typed my last research paper on a manual, portable typewriter.  Word processing was still in Beta, electric typewriters did not correct, and MemoryWriters were still a few years away. 

While smoking was not allowed in classrooms, it was allowed in hallways and most public places.  And everyone smoked, yes everyone but me.  Ugh!  No wonder I had lung problems!

In the library, we looked up information on....micro fiche machines.  Another ugh!  I think I almost ruined my eyes and had a chronic headache from using them.  Do these things still exist?  And, we used encyclopedias and reference books to do research.

If I needed to call home, I used a pay phone.  What, what is that you ask?  No, there were no cell phones in those days.  We paid 25 cents to make a local call at a pay phone.

Registering for classes was a half day affair.  No, it was not done late at night on a computer.  It involved going to the school at a specified time and then walking around a large room, or several rooms, or the convocation center, going from department to department and collecting punch cards for the classes you wanted.  Not as easy as it sounded because if a certain class you needed only met at a certain time or was full you then had to go back and start over to re-arrange the other classes.  Then you took the punch cards down to where ever the monstor sized reader machine was located.  Then, after standing in a never ending line, you got a print out of your classes...then you went to pay.  And we paid with a check,  yes a check.

Ah, the good old days.  Gone with the wind of progress, thank goodness!