The Good Old Days or How I Survived Hell

BORN TOO SOON  (WAY TOO SOON):   I commuted to college back in the day, and that doesn't mean that I drove myself  there at convenient times. Having neither a car nor a driver's license, I had to depend on the ordained bus and train schedules, or on the kindness or financial need of fellow commuters, and needless to say none of the above provided a direct route. My point being that I was constrained to specific times that I could be present at the college.  Education courses were a mandated part of the curriculum then, and in addition I was an English major.  Both of these courses required tons of reading, and what made matters more difficult, the professors of both English and Education had a propensity to assign required reading from books that were so rare, or else out of print, that they could only be found  on the Reserved Shelf at the college library.  We students actually had to sign up for a time slot when we could access the books, and since all members of the class had to read the same books in a specific time period, it was a major accomplishment to be able to find an open time slot that coincided with my fixed travel schedule.  Worse, on several occasions, when I was able to arrange for the right book at the right time,  I would find that the assigned pages of said book had been scissored right out.  I'm sure that would have been an act  worthy of expulsion  at the time, but I never knew of anyone getting caught. I  had neither the imagination nor the nerve to even think of such a dire act, but I somehow managed to graduate anyway. 
     We like to think that life used to be so simple compared to today, but I believe otherwise.  I had to go through a hellish process to be able to read an assignment:   today's students use their cells to take a picture of assigned chapters even in their own texts, just so they don't have to carry the book home.  What could be simpler than that!