August 26, 2003
Going Away to College?... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes".
Baby Boomers are returning to college in droves these days, and by that I don't mean we're taking classes to finally pursue our long-abandoned dreams. No, we're taking our children there.
Here we are, the mighty Baby Boomer generation who was going to change the world, and if it's any consolation, the world of college has definitely changed. I guess we all know that you can't send your kid to school any more without a computer. The rule in our house is that each kid gets one top-o'-the-line laptop entering Freshman year, and he better take care of it. Lose it, break it, let it get stolen - it doesn't matter. Don't come back asking for another one.
This year, the hottest laptops have 80 gigabytes of disk space, built-in wireless and Ethernet connections, and both CD and DVD burners. I have to say I really struggled over that DVD burner. What legitimate academic purpose could it possibly serve?
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Sure enough, first up in the bundle of books my son had to buy for basic business computing skills was how to program Web pages in HTML. Even math courses need more than pencil and paper, with online video lectures and all manner of tutorials, accessible 24 hours a day via the network.
Yes, just about everything - from registration to report cards - seems to be online, and the fact that their computers are mobile becomes an important feature. When the kids bring their laptops around any of the academic buildings, they are connected by what has been described to me as a "honking" wireless network, while their dorm rooms are all wired with high-speed Ethernet.
While the Ethernet service is included, you still have to buy your own high-speed cable between the wall outlet and your laptop, and our need was immediately addressed by two enterprising kids. They wandered the hallways, offering Ethernet cables for sale right out of their backpacks.
I wish you could see the puzzled looks on parents' faces as they listened to their spiel, while still pondering the discovery that each room came with a university-provided refrigerator and microwave.
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The first order of business between my son and his roommate was to pick beds, followed immediately by exchanging cell phone numbers and establishing that they both had brought PlayStations. Before I knew it, a television had materialized along with a screaming sub-woofer that hooked directly into their laptops.
I couldn't bring myself to tell them that when I went to college, we didn't even have phones in our rooms. I'm not even sure I can explain the strange system that existed for informing a person she had a call on one of the two hallway phones which served about 50 women, not to mention that there wasn't even a way to leave a message. We would have killed for a phone in our rooms.
Against this backdrop, it should be obvious why my favorite moment of all came immediately after my son and his roommate had finished setting up what appeared to be their own personal Circuit City outlet. One of them abruptly walked over to the touchtone phone, which sat silent and ignored in the corner. He pointed to it and asked, "What do we use that for?"
Frankly, I didn't have an answer.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
