My reflections on the best elements of college

College is both a life and an educational experience. For many, it is the first time that they are away from home, unmanaged and unsupervised on a regular basis, learning both the benefits and the costs of such freedom and responsibility.

In 1969, my strong sense is that college was a very different experience than it is today. Cost increases alone have dramatically impacted the way students apply to and approach college and the corresponding education they assume they will receive from the school. College admissions materials were all "hard copy," and one of my joys of my summer before my senior year in high school was writing to colleges on my pre-stamped, 4-cent postcards, requesting a catalog, application and "anything else" useful in my college discernment process...and my application to the school. I don't think I gave a thought to financial aid and, only later, after Michigan accepted me to their honors program but denied me aid, did I realize that my father had no interest in reporting his income to a school. So finances alone kept my final decision limited to New York public colleges, even though I had cast a wide net in requesting catalogs, from schools like the University of Arizona.

By the end of that first year, Binghamton shut down after the Kent State shootings.

I would peruse the catalogs, mostly interested in the grainy black-and-white photos of swarms of undergraduates, autumn leaves, quads and courtyards and ivy-covered buildings. Determining a "major" was not a factor, as schools offered scores of options and complete flexibility in choosing the major after two years of "general education" or "distribution requirements." Given the limited selections, "big-time"college athletics were not going to be part of my college life. Instead, I'd travel to Syracuse to see them host Penn State, in one of my very few weekend absences from campus.

Once upon campus, I was pretty well limited in terms of where I could go and what I could do, limited by scarce transportation options (and, of course, no car) and even more limited discretionary funds. This was when minimum wage was about $1.60 an hour and even though that might get me a decent meal at McDonalds, getting to McDonalds was almost always out of the question. The only reasonable, accessible by foot, off-campus extravagances were "The Other Place" bar and a tiny roadside shack that served cheap, basic food. I'm sure its gone and I can't recall its name, even thought I'd recognize it when I saw it -- if it is still there.

The Hinman dining experience, 1969-1974

Fifty years ago, college dining halls were low-cost, all-you-can-eat affairs, with institutional recipes, bland food, a lot of unhealthy options, and a dream come true for kids like me, coming from a large, rural family. I often joked that my college dining experience was less of a shock than it was to many of my peers, coming from small families in urban centers. I enjoyed the unlimited food and the general ambience of the dining hall. It was my social media platform, where I could wile away hours in this common gathering space of hundreds of Hinman denizens, where there was no physical or social distancing and none of the cliquish groupings that I had experienced in high school. They punched your meal ticket, you took what you wanted and ate what you wanted, then returned the dishes and leftovers to the little aperture that took in your remains.During and after that dining experience came the social experience. And at times, from my dorm, I would scan the approaches to the dining hall to manage a simultaneous arrival with one of my friends, or crushes.

To this point I have described the college experience outside the classroom, the education you earn from those 153 of the 168 hours a week when you were not in the classroom. I'll get to academics in a subsequent post, along with more thoughts about the best parts of education outside the classroom, from intramural, to campus employment, to weekend parties, to sex, drugs and rock and roll.