"

Waking to the blare of an alarm clock, I instinctively reached for my phone to check the time, only to discover that it was nowhere to be found. Neither was my laptop, my roommate’s LED strip lights or the collection of empty Celsius cans on my desk. Even more concerning, the calendar on my door read November 1966. Somehow, I had managed to travel 60 years back in time.

I turned to my roommate for an explanation, only to find it wasn’t my roommate at all. It was a man. And so was I. How awful! Frantic, I asked to borrow my roommate’s phone, only for him to direct me toward the payphone down the hall.

Coming to terms with the fact that I’d somehow traveled 60 yearsinto the past, I considered my options. I could try to figure out how to get back to 2026, warn someone about the future or simply go back to bed and hope it’s my phone alarm that wakes me up and not the analog monstrosity in its place. But I’ve already missed enough class this semester, so I might as well attend my 9:25 a.m. lecture. Stepping outside, I was greeted with an unpleasant sight: men. Everywhere. Men walking to class, men sitting on benches, men loitering outside South Dining Hall. I looked for a woman, any woman, but alas, none were to be found. Of course, I remembered, women weren’t admitted until 1972. And I thought the ratio in my engineering classes was bad.

In class, the professor announced an exam next Friday, and the guy next to me started anxiously flipping through his notes. “Relax, you’ll have time to study,” I whispered. “If I fail, I lose my deferment. Then I’m off to Vietnam,” he replied.

I thought about the 68 I scored on my last exam. Another trip to my academic advisor’s office wasn’t looking so bad after all. After class, my roommate told me he was planning to call a Saint Mary’s girl and ask her to a dance. I asked if they’d been talking, and he told me they’d met a week before. I wondered how he could possibly know whether she liked him. Had she been snapping him back quickly? Sending full-faces or just the occasional forehead? How much was her Snap score going up by? He asked what in the world I was talking about. Apparently, men in 1966 were expected to communicate their romantic intentions using actual words.

Huh ...

That evening, I attempted to study for my upcoming exam. Without Quizlet, YouTube or ChatGPT, I was left with the Herculean task of actually reading the textbook. Frustrated, I gave up and went to bed, hoping I’d wake up in 2026. Judging by the familiar lumps and springs digging into my back, I was beginning to suspect Notre Dame hadn’t replaced the mattresses since 1966.

For the first time in my life, I was happy to hear my phone’s alarm the next morning. I was relieved to be back in a world where women are allowed on campus, although I’ll admit we’ve made a few questionable advances in the past 60 years. Somewhere between the moon landing and the invention of Snapchat, men forgot how to talk to women.