So, I am off to college...during the day, still living in my parents' basement off campus.
One coding course to start: I like PL/1, dislike COBOL, can't seem to fathom LISP.
Take college level Calculus and Algebra: how could something I was so good at in high-school turn into something I loathed? lucky I didn't choose to be a math major.
Other courses come and go, always looking for the easy course to fill the schedule. A course in Canadian Economics was taught by Mel Watkins, then known as a real left-winger in the NDP. His statement in the first class was that a professor could change anything about a course he wanted to, except the name... so he proceeded to teach communist economics, can't say it has come in handy since, but Mel was just fun to listen to.
Still doing coding language courses, the environment is still primarily punch cards. You create your deck, and then get in line at the back of the room to feed them to a card reader, and then move down the line to a printer which spits out the results. The paper is the old style, wide, white with green lines, holes on the side for feeding the printer. So, you only have so many runs before the assignment is due...
A separate room next door has tables to sit at and work, shoot the breeze with other students. The big issue was that most people smoked then, but a movement was started by the minority to ban smoking in the work room. Looking back, I can see why, the air in the room was blue, but as a smoker in those days, I didn't care.
Speaking of smoke... there were a couple of card-reading machine rooms on the UofT campus, one in the sciences building that I frequented, and another in the main Engineering school building. Well, the latter building suffered a major fire one night, and firemen were clearing the building when they came to card-reader room. With smoke filling the room, students told the firemen, "I just need to run my deck one more time (!)"
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