Going To College: The Difference Between Gen Yers And Boomers

by. Ron Shevlin

Dropped the middle daughter off at college this week. A painful reminder of not only how old I am, but how my maturity level has failed to keep pace with my chronological age.

I was also struck by how different the moving into/going to college experience is today from what it was like when I went away to college.

Difference #1

Boomers: Took me all of 45 minutes to move into my dorm room. Five minutes to get my stuff out of the car into the room, 5 minutes to throw my clothes into drawers, 5 minutes to plug in my stereo, and 30 minutes experimenting with speaker placement in the room to optimize the stereophonic impact of Dark Side of the Moon.

Gen Y: 4.5 hours to move in. 30 minutes waiting for clueless Gen Y Resident Assistants to get traffic moving, 25 minutes to get the stuff into the room. Then it was 1 hour to clean the walls, the bed, the desk, and all the drawers (apparently, my tolerance for dirt is WAY higher than the rest of my family’s).  TWO AND A HALF hours to put the clothes into the dresser and closet, take them out, put them back in, take them out, put them back in, take them out, and put them back in. And oh yeah, 5 minutes for Dad to set up the printer with the laptop.

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