文档介绍：8. The Virtual College
In the fall of 1994, I arrived at my freshman dorm in my old station wagon filled with new clothes, too many shoes, and my proudest possession: puter the size of a small refrigerator. Fortunately, I only had to lug1 my 50-pound treasure to the second floor; the awkward (but color!) monitor 2 and dot matrix printer3 required two more trips. My gargantuan4, pristine5 machine was good for writing papers and playing solitaire6, and that was all.
By the time I was a senior, my school had e an IBM ThinkPad University. Every dorm, classroom, and office was wired with connections, and I was sending homework to my professors in e-mail attachments.
Today, it's hard to go 12 hours without seeing my beloved Hotmail inbox. The transition during those four years was revolutionary. Somehow, though, the whole thing seemed like a magical blur7. It was almost as if the appeared overnight as the undeniably integral8 part of college life that it now is. Once upon a time, professors used overhead projectors without LCD panels and laptops. Once (I think), students led discussions without PowerPoint presentations9. And there was a day that a campus visit was the best way to gather facts about an institution.
Now, virtual visits and web wizards10 are increasingly normal parts of college. The extent to which technology has changed college life and the speed with whic