You know you're older than your classmates when...

...in class, you watch a documentary about events in 1973 and
- you were alive in 1973,
- you can remember the fashions from 1973,
- the only other person in the room you can say that about for sure is the professor, and
- one of your classmates, who's seen the film before, announces that you've never SEEN as many people smoke inside before as you will in this movie. (Um, actually? I have.)

Off to soak my dentures and drink some Metamucil...

Comments

[Blue]

My grad school colleagues are shocked when I tell them we could smoke in class in my undergrad days.

[Belle]

Oh yeah, I've been there. I had to ask my seniors last night if they'd been born before 1991. Because most of my students so far were not... Not only do I remember 1973 - I got married in '74!

[Seeking Solace]

Yep. Been there, done that. :)

[Susan]

You should see the look on my students faces when I tell them that my mother took us to see JFK during the 1960 campaign. I might as well be Methuselah.

And I do remember smoking in class. In one of my grad school seminars, I had a classmate who had a silver cigarette case (!) and would ostentatiously tap the cigarette before lighting it.

[Jansen]

I'd be that kid. I think my parents were born in 1965.

[Historiann]

HA-ha. Susan's comment takes the cake. She might as well ask for a sasparilla at the soda fountain, or ask when she should expect the ice man.

So New Kid, I take it your students either don't watch Mad Men, or they do and the show is actually completely underplaying the amount of smoking that went on 1960-65.

(And, we could smoke in the dining halls in college at designated tables, but not in the classrooms.)

[zek]

This is off topic but could anyone tell me what happened to B*tch, PhD's blog? I notice that her link has been taken down from other blogs. Is she OK? I need my PK updates! Thanks!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

zek, as far as I know, Bitch Ph.D. the blog is still up and running - when I go to the website, it's still there. Beyond that, I know nothing - she's certainly been quiet over there (and on Twitter, actually) for quite a bit. (I just don't have her linked because I don't have any blogs linked any more - it got too complicated!) Let us know if you hear anything else!

Historiann - thinking about it, I'm not sure Mad Men does fully represent the degree to which people smoked (I don't think I've seen any of the major characters smoke?). But in the interests of full disclosure, the movie was about miners in eastern Kentucky in the early 1970s, so smack dab in the middle of tobacco country - so it might have been a little disproportionate even for the time!

I don't remember anyone being able to smoke in classrooms, but professors in my grad program bitched prodigiously about not being able to smoke in their offices anymore, when that was banned (since the uni. cycled the air throughout the building, and their smoking polluted everyone else).

Jansen - not that there's anything wrong with being that kid! It was just funny to me, that it was such a shock to the student. I used to be that kid - when I was in grad school the first time around, I was the student shocked that a fellow student remembered Kennedy getting shot. (Well, not so much shocked as annoyed that the student was so upset that *I* couldn't remember when Kennedy got shot. I have more sympathy for the student now!)

Susan - you know, it's funny, I think that anything that happened before one was born (and this is based on my own experience of being that kid) tends to look equally old when one isn't used to thinking very historically. So seeing Kennedy campaign and, say, remembering the Great Depression would pretty much be equally old - they're all back there in the past somewhere!

Anyway, it's nice to hear other folks' stories about this. I don't like to make a big deal about age differences, and often/usually they don't much matter, but sometimes I come right up against them and they make me laugh. (And feel old.)

The other thing that makes me laugh is when profs say, "I'm probably the only one in the room that remembers this," because the profs who say this most often are the ones exactly my age - so I do remember what they're talking about. (Sometimes they'll say to one of the older male students, "You and I are probably the only ones here who remember this," and I'm never sure if they don't include me because they don't realize I'm their age, or if it's just rude to make those kinds of comments to women!)

[helenesch]

I had a class in grad school in the mid-90's where the prof smoked and drank--and actively encouraged us to smoke and drink, too! It wasn't technically allowed, but I guess no one complained.

I was a kid in the 70's and also recall people smoking everywhere--including on planes and in movie theaters. I've always hated the smell of smoke, and I'm not quite sure how I made it through all that....

What I find weird about the age difference between me and my students is that they were little kids when things like 9/11 happened. I was in my current job in 2001, and it feels like that was not long ago. But their sense of time is so different (as was mine at that age--the 60's seemed like ancient history when I was growing up in the early 80's).

[Innovation and Insight]

Interesting...And informative blog ..I don't remember anyone being able to smoke in classrooms, but college mates used to smoke in college campus..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpV5bFP657I I hate that thing .. These should be strictly avoided ..

[Dr. Cynicism]

Hahaha! You cracked me up with this one! Great stuff by the way; thoroughly enjoying your blog.

[frustrated MA student]

I'm not *that* old, although going back to school makes me feel it, but my freshman dorm was the last residential building to grant students a chance to vote on whether they could smoke in their rooms and the lounges. One hall voted to permit it, and the following year, the admin took away that aspect of the "self-determination" thing.

This was not that long ago. It feels like ancient history, but really, not that long ago. OTOH today's crop of freshmen were probably still peeing their training pants then, so.

Speaking of which, if I hadn't quit a few years ago, I'd probably be shaking in front of the library, wondering why I can't bum a cigarette off anyone.