Another Era

Ah the days of yesteryear... For my blog, I am exploring the differences between a college student of today, versus one in the 60's. Rather than researching these differences, I am going straight to the source, my dad, who is a 1964 graduate of the University of Dayton. For starters he was beginning his college career when The Beatles were hitting the scene, Some Like It Hot was the big movie of the day, and the hot new technologies were electric typewriters and color TVs; while today we have musicians such as 50 Cent or The Jonas Bros, movies that don't turn into classics or go straight to dvd, and we are on the verge of glasses that can function as smart phones. Things are certainly many shades different than they were once upon a time. 


Social media in 1960 was just the telephone, and a landline at that. "It is certainly a lot easier to make a date today than it was back then," my dad, ever the ladies' man, remarked, "today you can call someone on the way home and make a date with them whereas before I had to go home and call them and hope that they were home, too." He maintained what we call 'facebook friendships' by meeting up with people on campus in between classes, that was how you hung out and coordinated plans for parties.


There was no instant way to obtain knowledge, now we can just 'Google it'. During our interview, my dad wanted to recall the actor's name in Some Like It Hot and it was available at his fingertips. I asked how he would have gone about getting information like that 50 years ago, he said he would have called into a radio show, and if they did not know, they could ask fellow listeners to call in with the answer. Besides that, there was always the library.


Everything was face to face, there was no such thing as fast food, people filled your gas tanks and milk and laundry was delivered,  and banking was done on a first name basis. When asked on what era he preferred, my dad said that although in the 60's it was a simpler time, with fewer divorces and less stresses, that the here and now is much better what with the instant access to people and information at the click of a button.