Tech Savvy Mama

Parenting in the Digital Age

A Look Back at E-Mail During My College Days

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Thank you to Yahoo! Mail for sponsoring this post about staying connected. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I should have known that the man I would marry was the junior who helped me access my email account from the computer in my college dorm room.  It may not sound like a big deal now since our constant ability to access email is something most of us don’t even think twice about, but at the time it was.

When I started college, I was one of the only first years on my hall who had a computer.  With a printer!  One friend had a Brother word processor.  Someone else brought a typewriter.  My roommate later got a PC that occupied her entire desk, had the green and black monitor, and ran DOS.  Word. 

Most of my friends didn’t see the need for a computer since our school had an amazing lab with Macs and PCs.  The only problem was that it was housed in the library. All. The. Way. Across. Campus.  For a small liberal arts school, the library wasn’t too far in the fall and spring but during the New England winters, it became an expedition almost required sled dogs and sherpas. 
So when my friend from high school (aka now-husband) showed up, I was more than happy to let him have a seat at my Mac LCII and work his magic on my computer. 
In a matter of minutes, he re-configured my modem (remember those and the funny noises they made upon connecting to the internet?) and set up my computer so I could access my school email from my room.  Can you tell I was not so tech-savvy then?

Oh the joys of being able to check my email account from my room!  No longer did I need to make the trek to the library to log into my account to learn that I had zero messages in my in-box.  I could now do this the comfort of my room! 

My friends also appreciated this convenience although sadly, we mostly wrote to each other.  And then we’d print them out and save them in a folder.  How tech savvy!
And if you know Whitney from Mommies with Style, we were just having a great laugh about her mom remembers my husband also setting up her computer for her back in the day and Broadcast, the precursor of AOL IM and Skype!  Good times!


Now email through Yahoo gets even better with the ability to embed photo slide shows for easy sharing of pictures with those you love.  Take a look!

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Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
©2012

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Comments

  1. Stimey says

    I remember when I first heard about email. I couldn’t quite get the concept for a long time. I think I got two emails the entire time I was in college.

    I, however, had a Brother word processor. And it was AWESOME. People came from far and wide to borrow it. It took about 16 years to print out a paper though.

  2. Sasha says

    My college got the internet my senior year, but we didn’t have email. I had one of those trusty Brother word processors…. such a memory! You could only see one line at a time, and then when you hit print, it basically just typed the whole thing out! Too funny!