Does anyone else have this problem?
You get to college, bring all the essentials (including a TV,) and the TV just ends up taking space?
Ever since I got here I have watched A LOT less. I always watch The Simpsons, and, if I can, Futurama, Malcom in the Middle, and X-Files. That’s about it, save certain random TV watchings.
Is this the same for any of you?
Well I don’t watch much tv and I am not yet in college:)
Yeah, I’d noticed a slight decline…
Before I went to college, I watched very little. Now I watch none. Then again, it’d be easier to watch TV if I actually had one… 
COunt me into the none party. None. Not a bit. I find the machine oddly facinating when I see it at home.
I watch virtually no TV at school. A lot of movies, though. Part of it is just that I do a lot of stuff in the evenings, so there’s no time to watch the regular shows.
C’est la vie. I get tapes of Buffy, so all is well.
This describes me almost exactly. I watch Cartoon Network alot, but that’s the only channel.
Well I’m not in college yet but I go to a school that might as well be a college, it’s on a college campus and they give us a damn college workload and even college classes the last two years. Since I came to CAMS I watch little to no TV, it’s horrible.
Kitty
I don’t own a TV–it’s bad enough I have 24/7 internet access, if I had a TV, I would never get anything done, as compared to the little I get done now. When I go home for breaks, I spend a lot of time on the couch, staring at the idiot box, drooling.
Junior year of high school (at a university): no TV
Senior year of high school: Roommate had TV; I often had CNN on in the background, but nothing more
First year of college: Roommate had big TV, which I didn’t once see him watch. I used it on a couple of holidays.
Second year of college: No TV
Third year of college: No TV
When I’m home, though, TV is second on my list of three top priorities (after sleeping and before eating).
My tv is on about 10 hours a day at school, much more than at home. I never really look at it, though. It’s just there for the background noise. I hate complete silence.
My situation’s about the same as Flymaster’s. I never turn the tv off while I’m at school, but it’s pretty much background noise.
Siddown, children, whilst I tell yas what it was like back in myyy day…
Back in the years of '91 to '95 none of the dorms where I was even had cable. So it was pretty much crappy reception on crappy network TV. And I had better things to do, anyway, like surf the web on a text-only browser - the only way we could, without signing on to an ISP or going to a computer lab.
And we were GRATEFUL for it!
You had text? Pschaw. We just had a light bulb that blinked on and off, and we translated the binary ourselves! It took three hours to read a one page e-mail, and if you missed part of it the first time through, tough titty!
And we liked it! We liked it fine!
Seriously, as to the OP, I rarely if ever watched television throughout most of my undergrad career. My senior year we got cable in our apartment, and it sucked me in like a black hole. Since med school I’ve gone back to the rabbit ears, and most days I don’t even turn it on at all. The internet is my junk now…
Dr. J
Well, I was a creative writing major, and that being one of those majors that you really don’t have to do anything academic for, I watched tons of TV, seriously 3-4 hours a day, if not more. Strangely enough, now that I’m out in the “real world,” I don’t even have cable (just the major networks, and UPN/WB), and watch less than 4 hours of TV a week, sports notwithstanding. It saddens me to see this much potential TV time go to waste…
One of my personal indulgences is cable. I don’t live in a dorm, and I could probably use that $30 a month on something a bit more useful like food or clothing or rent, but while I don’t watch a lot of TV I sure do appreciate having it. All the shows I watch regularly or semi-regularly are on cable channels so if I didn’t get it I’d be in trouble.
But I don’t watch more than a couple of hours a day total during the semester. We won’t get into my video game addiction, another reason I LOVE my TV…
I used my TV mostly as a monitor, to watch videos. Few channels came in well, anyway. Dorms often have crappy reception, and I don’t think, unless they were built very recently, that they can accomodate cable. Someone ragged on me at that time for not being familiar with Ren and Stimpy. Hello?! If one lives in a dorm, by definition one can’t get Nickelodeon! I got my mom to record shows for me, collected the videos when I went home, and binged out instead of watching serially. The only show I really went out of my way for was Twin Peaks before it started to suck, and that I watched in the room of a friend whose TV came in better. Oh, and I spent many tipsy nights watching and critiquing SNL with a friend who wanted to do standup comedy.
Yeah, someone told me before I went to college that I would watch a lot less TV. I was a little disturbed at the time, but when I got to school I quickly figured out why - You’re having too much fun to watch.
That said, I did have a TV in my fraternity house, and I do have some memorable TV moments from my college era (1990-1994):
-
Watching the start of the Gulf War on CNN and wondering whether we were headed into the next world war.
-
Getting invited over to the dorms by some cute girls to watch 90210 and Melrose Place during the week.
-
Getting whacked and watching “Heavy Metal” and “The Wall” at the fraternity house.
-
Watching the Giants win the Super Bowl and making fun of all the Redskins fans on campus.
I think the 24/7 blazingly fast Internet access did it for me. I used to veg out all the time in grade school and junior high. Got (pay-by-the-hour, even) Internet access in high school, and my TV-watching gradually declined to a few hours a week. Now, I’m in my third year of college and turn on Buffy and Futurama when I can remember, and that’s about it. Except maybe for special events like the election coverage and the Olympics.
My then-roommate bought a TV last year. The reception in the dorms is horrible, so much so that you need cable to watch anything in your own room. We never got cable for the TV, but there were a VCR and a few gaming systems hooked up to it. It proved useful enough that I bought one for my current single… and I don’t even have a VCR.