More Cheese Please and Other College Articles

By Jeffrey Cohen

A lot can happen to a person in 30 years.

Thirty years ago, as a student at New York's Queens College, humor writer Jeffrey Cohen honed his craft while subverting the expectations of readers of the school's various publications.

Cohen wrote about attending a commuter college, the professors and university personnel, his fellow students, and what life was like for people coming of age in the mid-1980s.

While doing some housecleaning this summer, Cohen stumbled onto his college scrapbooks and rediscovered these early works. Not surprisingly, most contained multiple dated references (fax machines, President Reagan, Hill Street Blues). But many pieces were as amusing as originally intended.

Cohen decided to dust off the best of these articles and share them with a new generation of readers, as well as with his friends who occasionally quoted lines that had stuck with them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeffrey Cohen
• Release date: Nov 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311514509

Jeffrey Cohen

Jeff Cohen is the nom de plume of Jeffrey Cohen, author of the Aaron Tucker mystery and Double Feature mystery series and as E.J. Copperman, the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series. His hobbies include speaking about himself in the third person.

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More Cheese Please and Other College Articles

By Jeffrey Cohen

Copyright 2014 Jeffrey Cohen

Cover Design by Robert Wallman

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781311514509

For Andrea

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Prologue

I have a recurring dream where I am back in college.

I am deep in the bowels of the Queens College student union building.

Way down in the basement, which housed the offices of the student-run newspapers.

I am sitting in front of a typesetting machine, which is what we used to create copy in the pre-computer-layout days.

Each typesetting machine had a rotating drum on which you placed two separate font strips. You physically typed in an article and its headline and printed them onto photo-sensitive paper. You spooled the article into a tube and brought the tube into a darkroom, where the paper traveled through development chemicals and got hung up on a wall to dry. Later, the editors would grab the articles, cut them out and measure them for length, run them through in a waxer, and lay out their sections.

It's an unglamorous process that can leave you sticky, smelly, and stymied. Not to mention typos that had to be corrected on a line-by-line basis.

But enough backstory.

In my dream, I am sitting and typing furiously. Exactly what I am typing, I can't tell you. There is no copy clipped to the mounting display. But in those days, I averaged 70-80 words per minute, so I was probably writing on the fly.

I finish with a crescendo and hit ENTER. The drum chugs as it prints the article onto the photo-sensitive paper and spools it into the tube. I gently lift the tube and swipe the paper cutter, standing to make my way to the dark room.

In the dark room, I run the paper through the chemicals and watch my words come to life. A little while ago, there was nothing. Now my thoughts are (nearly) clearly stated.

Opening the door, I take the damp copy and tack it onto the corkboard. Someone appears with a ruler and measures the length of the article, shaking his head.

What's wrong? I ask.

It has to be longer.

But that's all there is, I reply.

Then write something else. We have a copy hole.

He turns and points to the boards for that week's issue, which will be dropped off at the printer in a few hours. Page after page are empty, with markings for advertisements, headlines, and articles.

He takes my article and uses it to fill one space. There are still many, many more to fill. He looks up at me expectantly.

Sputtering, I stumble back to the typesetting room, sit down, and try to think of something else to write. After a few minutes, I begin typing. Soon, my pace quickens. Eventually, I stop and hit ENTER.

Removing the print tube, I go back to the dark room adn turn off the lights. A tremendous feeling of deja vu washes over me. I've done this before, I think. Think? I know I have.

Yes, I have.

I published nearly 400 articles from high school through college graduation.

Only four stories appeared in the GUIDE POST, my high school newspaper. That was primarily a vehicle for the editors, who were planning on majoring in journalism or communications. With something like 26 editors and a publication schedule that pumped out an issue every three weeks, there was precious little white space for anyone not on the editorial board.

My high school also had a poetry journal and an alternative magazine, mostly funded by ads from local merchants. The editor of the latter publication once asked me if I would pose for a cover photo, holding an old-fashioned (huge) black calculator while surrounded by toughs. That told me all I needed to know about what he thought of my writing abilities. I did however contribute two articles (in two years) to his magazine.

My friend Lauren, one of the GUIDE POST editors, approached me in early March 1980 during our senior year. Have any good ideas for April Fools? she asked.

I can think of a bunch of different things, I replied brightly. What's the deadline?

Oh no, Lauren said. Only the editors write the April Fools edition. Could you give me some funny suggestions?

I said I'd let her know if I came up with anything. I didn't. Let her know, that is. When the April Fools issue was published, she shared a byline with another editor, who I'm sure conceived the premise that they used.

I also served a term as editor for the semi-regular newsletter from Levels, the local youth center housed under the Great Neck Library. This was before I gained any editing experience or skill with layout. The Levels staff showed me the previous issues and I maintained their look and feel throughout my tenure. My columns were short and sweet and related to some upcoming activity or holiday.

The Levels newsletter underwent a renaissance AFTER my departure. It looks great, I was told by a couple of people who didn't realize I no longer ran the newsletter. Thanks, I replied lamely, not wanting to make things awkward for them.

But in college, things were different. First of all, I was not attending an elite institution. Nor was my first choice of universities a bastion of award-winning journalism. So the people who migrated to the newspapers really wanted to write. Happily, most of them had a facility to produce verbiage. For those who didn't, that's why newspapers have editors.

Queens College has churned out a respectable number of name alumni. You can do an Internet search. I'm not here to promote the school, for a multitude of reasons.

My first day on campus in 1981, I made two stops in