Starting this week, USA Today will begin celebrating its 25th anniversary by publishing 25 lists over the course of 25 weeks, each consisting of 25 things from the last 25 years. (Get all that?) The first list is 25 things that have died out since 1982.

This got me thinking: This fall, I will have been in college 10 years (as an undergrad and grad student). What has changed over that time? This gets a little tricky. Besides undergrad/grad differences, I got my bachelor’s degree from a liberal-arts school roughly 1/20th the size of IU-Bloomington. Nevertheless, I think I’ve come up with five general changes to college life. I’d do 10, but hey, not enough space.

• Interconnection. When I was an undergraduate, instant messaging was just catching on, cell phones were still fairly rare (given their expense) and we were very much wired rather than wireless. So you mostly learned about happenings via word-of-mouth or fliers, phoned your parents occasionally and sometimes received e-mails from friends at other schools. Thus, today’s constant connection via Facebook, cell phones, blogs and ever-expanding wireless coverage still blows my bleedin’ mind. On the plus side, you never feel lonely. But they can also be distracting and overwhelming and prevent you from cutting the parental apron strings.
• Political correctness. In 1997, things weren’t as bad as they had been in early ’90s, but public discourse was still pretty stilted – there was a real fear that a comment could be construed as sexist, racist, homophobic, etc., making you a pariah. Thank God for programs like “Chappelle’s Show” and “South Park” and for the Internet. Things may be cruder now, but they’re more honest and lively – and at the same time, surveys are indicating greater tolerance for things like interracial marriage and gay rights, PC’s death seems like a good thing.
• Sexual interaction. I can’t decide whether 1997 was more backward or more enlightened than today. On the one hand, there was less openness about sex and too much paranoia due to a lack of understanding about matters such as AIDS and sexual harassment. On the other hand, I’m not sure that media-fueled self-objectification has benefited women’s rights or that the proliferation of random hook-ups is healthy.
• Polarization. All my college life, liberals have outnumbered conservatives. Both sides have had fanatics and there’ve always been efforts to establish ideologically pure cliques. The division is just a lot worse now — the latest “American Freshman” survey from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute shows both greater polarization and greater interest in politics among incoming students. ‘Course, if you were here in 2004, you already know this.
• Uncertainty. I was an undergrad during the prosperity of the late-’90s “.com bubble.” Liberal-democracy was invincible, and globalization promised to bring economic development to the world. Then the bubble burst, 9/11 and Iraq happened … and suddenly it has seemed as if everyone is trying to kill you or take your job. No wonder you kids are hooking up like rabbits.

So are things better now? Worse? I don’t know. But at least *NSYNC is off the radio.