Ancient Wisdom: On Being an Assistant Professor in My Mid-30s

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m in my mid-30s. Not exactly ancient, right? Or so I thought. But to my undergraduate students, I might as well be a relic from the age of dinosaurs. The way they look at me when I reference “dial-up internet” is the same way I’d look at someone describing life before electricity. I mean, really—dial-up wasn’t that long ago... was it?

The other day, a student casually dropped, "Alan, what was it like back in your day?" My day? I was momentarily stunned, transported back to a time of TRL on MTV, when cell phones were flipping open, not unlocking with facial recognition.

And then there’s the absolute bewilderment at anything pre-2000s. "Wait, so you had to, like, call people to meet up?" they ask, eyes wide, as if this was some kind of medieval ritual. I tried to explain dial-up internet once, and let’s just say it did not go well. "So, you’re telling me the internet made a noise? Like, an actual noise?" Yes, my dear Gen Zs, it screamed and screeched its way into existence every time we logged on. And if someone picked up the phone while you were online? Forget it. You were disconnected, back to square one, furiously redialing.

Then there are the baffled looks when I reference ancient relics like CDs, floppy disks, or (gasp) the early days of MySpace. I once mentioned having to actually wait for a TV show to air because Netflix wasn't around to give us everything on-demand. The horror! "Wait, you couldn’t just binge-watch?" No, sweet summer child, you had to wait a whole week for the next episode and hope your VCR recorded it if you missed it.

It gets better. "Alan, what was your first phone like?" Ah, my Nokia brick. Indestructible, battery life that lasted a week, and Snake—the OG mobile game. To them, it’s like hearing stories of the first telegraph. "But... how did you text without emojis?" I didn’t have the heart to tell them that we had to manually press the 2 key three times just to get a "C."

It’s funny, really. I’m not even that old, but somehow, to my students, my mid-30s feel like a lost era. They look at me like I’m a time traveler from a forgotten world where social media meant MSN Messenger and getting directions involved printing out a MapQuest page. I can’t wait for the day I mention a landline phone and they ask, "Wait, phones used to be attached to the wall?!"

Despite the humor, it’s also a bit of a reality check. The world has changed so fast in such a short time, and sometimes I catch myself sounding like the stereotypical "back in my day" professor. But hey, if sharing stories about the dark ages of dial-up internet helps bridge the generational gap in the classroom, then I’ll gladly embrace my newfound role as the ancient one.

So, the next time a student asks me what life was like "back in my day," I’ll smile, pull up a chair, and say, "Well, let me tell you a tale of a time before TikTok..."