by Nadya Williams (@NadyaWilliams81)
On my first weekend at college, a quarter century ago now, I dutifully packed my laundry basket, bottle of detergent, and quarters for the machines, and descended into the basement of the building next-door to mine to do laundry. As I was starting a load, I overheard a conversation between two guys in the laundry room. They were, it appears, highly confused about what exactly they needed to do. They understood the basics—that these machines would receive their dirty clothes and, after some time, render them clean. But the process of getting from point A to point B was a bit opaque for these gentlemen. In fact, they were unclear as to what point A even was.
A decade or so later, when I was teaching at a state university in the South, I came to learn that a graduating senior in one of my classes had never learned to cook. She was able to operate a microwave to warm up frozen dinners, but that was the extent of her culinary competence. At least she knew how to do laundry. Since then, I have come across many other students like her. “So, what do you eat?” I sometimes ask these foundlings who may have been raised by wolves.
