Twenty years ago this week, I started my senior year at Central Michigan University.
Half a lifetime has passed since that last fall I spent in Mount Pleasant. And though I got another run at buying notebook paper and folders for business school, there’s something special about that undergrad experience — moving away from home, living surrounded by thousands of people your age, your whole life ahead of you.
Enough time has passed that I never heard the word “Internet” in a single journalism class. We all went to the computer lab to write class assignments. No one had cellphones or email.
Sure, the Internet would have brought great knowledge to my doorstep, giving me access to information from around the world, saving me late-night trips to the library when I had a report to write.
Yes, it would have helped with my job search, as I wouldn’t have had to wait for newspaper industry classifieds in Editor & Publisher magazine to find out who was hiring.
But mostly I think I’m glad I was part of the last bastion of CMU grads who had to actually speak to each other if they wanted to communicate, and for whom “social networking” probably meant going to the Bird for Thursday happy hour.
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