College has changed a lot over time. My parents are always telling me how lucky I am to have access to so many resources and pieces of technology. I never realized just how different their experiences were until they started telling me about how they used typewriters and phone books. After that, I had to get the full scoop, so here are the things that stood out the most to me:
1. Campus size
My dad played basketball for the University of Utah, and my mom went to Texas A&M, so I was already aware of just how big college campuses can be. Many students drove to class and paid for parking passes. At Hopkins, there’s a limited number of places where cars can go and most paths are reserved for walking. It’s most common to see people walking to class, but I also regularly see students taking electric scooters—something my parents think is pretty cool. The craziest thing I heard about campus size, however, came from my dad. Since his school had so many students taking general introductory courses, his first two years were taught almost exclusively from video recordings—and not the kind of online lecture videos I see today. Students would show up to a classroom, then an aide would put in a videotape for everyone to watch. There were homework assignments and textbook readings, but no official teacher—only an aide that students could book meetings with. Not surprisingly, my dad said this teaching method left him with an understanding of the material that was “good enough.”
2. AP/IB Classes
Getting college credit while still in high school was much less common than it is now. My mom’s high school got a couple of AP classes in her senior year, and my dad’s high school didn’t have any. This meant they had to retake a lot of these classes when they got to college, which is both boring and financially straining. They jumped on the opportunity for me to take AP classes when I was in high school.
3. No autocorrect
It wasn’t surprising to me that they didn’t have any spell check, but I never thought about how inconvenient that is. Spelling mistakes were much more commo\n than they are now. If my parents didn’t know the grammatically correct way to write a sentence, they had to look it up in a book. And when they cited sources for their papers, they had to go to the library and read through books to find what they were looking for. When they found what they needed, they couldn’t spend two seconds putting it into a citation maker like I do; they had to do it all by hand. I can’t even imagine how tedious that would be!
4. No emailing, leaving messages, or texting
All my parents could do was call or write letters. And even then, calls were billed by the minute, so my mom told me she was always watching the time, so she didn’t talk for too long. Meanwhile, my calls home last anywhere from 20 minutes to six hours! I’m also always emailing my teachers, TAs, and advisors with questions, but my parents had to do all of this in person. Going all the way to someone’s office for a simple yes/no question or not being able to quickly email a last-minute question to a teacher about an assignment would drive me insane, but probably also teach me to manage my time better. In addition to this, all their group projects had to meet in person. If you needed to call someone and they didn’t answer, you couldn’t even leave a message. You were just out of luck. Today, when we have group assignments, we almost never meet in person. We split the work up over text or meet on Zoom if we really need to. Even lots of club meetings happen on Zoom.
5. Paper books
Although paper books are definitely still used, it’s rare for me to see that (unless it’s a book someone’s reading for fun). I’ve never seen anyone carrying textbooks around. My parents had to go to their campus bookstore, split the cost and share with a friend, or look for someone who dropped the course and was selling their books. They didn’t have the option to get an electronic copy so they could annotate it using their iPads. Their classes also almost exclusively revolved around the textbook. In some of my classes, we’ve been required to purchase materials, but for most of them, we don’t need to buy anything. And when we use the online textbook service, Achieve, it’s covered by the school.
6. No mandatory attendance
I was surprised to learn that attendance was never required for all of my parents’ classes. They just had to make sure they showed up for quizzes and tests and did their homework. Not every class at Hopkins has attendance requirements, but I’ve been surprised at how many do. For small seminar classes, it’s really common. Teachers learn names fast, so it’ll be obvious when someone is absent. For large introductory lecture classes, I’d say there’s a 50/50 chance of an attendance policy. We use iClicker, which is an app that you download on your phone (and Hopkins pays for). You search for your school and course, then during class, the teacher posts questions that you respond to using the app. For the classes I’ve taken, we had to answer the question to receive credit, and it didn’t have to be correct. iClicker also uses your location, so if you’re not in class, it won’t give you credit. When I was taking chemistry during my first year, halfway through the semester, the teacher changed the settings, so location services were on and everyone who hadn’t been showing up was panicking and running to class to get their credit. After that day, class turnout was really high.
7. No meal swipes
This one really surprised me. For our meal plans, students can get different combinations of meal swipes and dining dollars. Dining dollars are similar to having a credit card, where you buy specific items, and it subtracts from the amount of cash you have. Meal swipes allow you to eat as much food as you want when you go into the dining hall. When my dad was in school, he didn’t have the option of getting as much as he wanted in the dining hall. After he went through the lunch line, they would total up how much he spent, then hand him a receipt. Here, you just scan your school ID, so the system automatically subtracts a meal swipe and you’re good to eat as much as you want—way more convenient than I realized!
8. Class Registration
At Hopkins, seniors get priority for courses, then juniors, sophomores, and first years. Course registration day is a big deal because at 7 a.m., everyone clicks “Register” as soon as they can to get a place in class. When my parents were in school, they didn’t have computers to do everything for them. They had to physically go in person and form a line or fill out what they wanted from a course catalog and call a registration number. Seniors still got priority, but everything else was pretty different. My mom mentioned how easy it was to slip through the cracks in this system, especially at such a big school. She ended up taking two economics courses in the opposite order she was supposed to, only to find out much later when she was struggling.
9. Waitlists
The second part of course registration is snagging a spot on the waitlist for a class and spending all summer hoping to get an email saying you made it in. If you make it in, you have a limited amount of time to claim your spot before the system automatically moves to the next person in line. My dad’s waitlist system was totally different. Since there were basically no computers, you had to stop by in person to see if any spots opened up. Their waiting line wasn’t ranked, so whoever happened to show up when a spot was open got it. I’ve never been more thankful for computers in my life.
10. Computer programming
I had to save the best for last because this one really blew my mind. My dad mentioned that he took a few computer programming classes when he was in college, and he started going on and on about these things called punch cards. Apparently, a punch card is a really thin piece of cardboard with tiny holes in it. He would write out information on a coding sheet, then keypunch operators would punch holes in the cards so it could be fed into a card reader and run by a computer. My dad said for his exams, everyone would input their cards, and their grades were determined based on how many of the cards correctly ran their intended code. It’s crazy to see how far programming has come!
As you can see, my parents had a vastly different college experience than mine. Talking to them made me appreciate technology and how efficient it’s made things, but it also helped me understand what life was like for them. Needless to say, now I wanna get my grandparents’ perspective on this!
