Remember When #11–late '80s current events and post college memories
Post #11 in the Remember When blog series
Welcome back to the Remember When serial blog. So far in the previous posts of this series, we’ve made it through college. If you missed any of the posts leading up to this one, I recommend you start at the beginning here.
Now it’s time to talk about some of the current events that took place after we graduated and that uncertain time in our lives when we were first starting our careers. Plus, remember your 5-year high school reunion?
CURRENT EVENTS (Post College)
By 1987, when many of us late Boomers/early Gen-Xers were finally done with school, the Iran Contra Affair was really starting to gain attention. Gas prices were dropping due to a surplus in crude oil caused by falling demand after the 1979 energy crisis. (A gallon of gas decreased to $1 by 1989.)
By the end of the decade, the population of the U.S. was around 247 million, about a hundred million less than in 2025, and the median household income was approximately $25,000 ($71,000 when adjusted for inflation) versus $83,000 in 2025.
In politics, married Senator Gary Hart dropped out of the democratic presidential race when a photograph of him with Donna Rice (not his wife) sitting on his lap aboard the yacht “Monkey Business” was made public.
Remember these…other notable events
In October of 1987, the stock market crashed. The Dow Jones dropped 508 points, the biggest one-day percentage loss in history (22.6%) at the time. The crash became known as Black Monday.
In January of 1989, the first George Bush, the Vice President to Ronald Reagan, became the president of the United States. He won, in part, due to a poorly run campaign by his opponent— Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis.
It was the first presidential election since 1940 in which a party won the presidency three consecutive times. It might have been four if Bush had just not said: “Read my lips. No new taxes.” Then raised taxes…
In November of 1989, the Berlin Wall, which divided Germany into eastern communism and western democracy, fell and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945.
It was two years after President Reagan had dramatically stood by the wall and told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “If you seek peace–if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe–if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Over the next few weeks, people used hammers and picks to knock off chunks of the wall then sold them. My brother was an officer in the Army stationed in Germany at the time and bought some of the wall fragments for his family members, including me. I still have this piece of history today.
Where were you when… the Berlin Wall fell?
🗨 What current events do you remember during this time?
(Share your memories in the comments section at the end of this post.)
Post College Memories
“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test and don’t ask why
It’s not a question, but a lesson learned in time
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right
I hope you had the time of your life”
—Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), Green Day
It felt great graduating from college, just as it had from high school. Another milestone accomplished. While there were a lot of things those of us who went to college would miss, it was liberating to finally be done with school forever. (Unless, of course, we stayed in school to get a Master’s degree, putting off entering the real world for a few more years).
For the first time since we were five years old, we didn’t have homework or tests to worry about or school to return to in the fall. On the other hand, now that we were in the real world, we had to hunt for a real job.
Remember when…
…you decided what you wanted to be when you grew up?
Some people who graduate from college already know what they want career-wise for their future, though sometimes it’s guided more by income potential, what they think they should be doing or what others expect of them rather than their personality traits, strengths and passions. Others aren’t sure despite spending four years in college.
For many of us, there would be constant obstacles, red herrings and misdirection before we finally began to see a pattern evolve as to what we liked and didn’t like doing, what we were and weren’t good at, and where we fit in.
Though I started out working in advertising agencies, I ultimately found my happy place writing and managing the production of marketing and corporate communication materials.
🗨Did you end up in the career you thought you would when you graduated college?
(Share your memories in the comments section at the end of this post.)
Remember when…
…you looked for a job after college?
When those of us born in the 1960s graduated from college, we didn’t have LinkedIn, which didn’t launch until 2003. Even the first online job search and public resume database—The Monster Board—didn’t launch until 1994, CareerBuilder in 1995 and HotJobs in 1996.
Instead, we networked for a job in person, at job fairs, or through connections in social and professional circles. Job advertisements were primarily found in newspapers and through word-of-mouth.
Whereas before graduation we may have had jobs in a video store, grocery store or a mall, we were now seeking more professional positions. During the 1980s personal computer boom led by IBM, Apple and Microsoft, there were more and more computer jobs to be had. There was also a big surge in air travel demand that led to jobs for pilots, flight attendants, etc. and a housing boom that led to a surge in the popularity of real estate agent careers.
Then there were the typical high-pressure jobs in corporations, law firms, advertising agencies (where I started out), Wall Street and other positions that entailed long hours and intense competition in the rat race to get ahead. People in these positions were often referred to as “yuppies.”
Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals): A term coined in the ‘80s, yuppies were considered young, well-paid business professionals chasing after material objects, financial success and a fashionable lifestyle. Most of the time, the word was not used as a compliment.
In some cases, getting a good job meant moving out of our home state, leaving behind our friends and family and the comfort of home for the unknown.
During the 1980s, more than 40% of job seekers relocated for a new position. This percentage would decline before rising temporarily in the dot-com era of the ‘90s when companies were flush with cash and could afford to offer generous relocation packages. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, the relocation trend would start trending downward once again.
🗨 What was your first job after college? Did you have to move for it?
(Share your memories in the comments section at the end of this post.)
Remember when…
…you got your own place?
In the late ‘80s, most of us still believed in the American dream our middleclass parents had taught us—that if we worked hard and sacrificed, we, too, could work our way up the job and salary ladder and have nice houses in the suburbs.
Of course, back then we experienced a much more affordable housing market than young adults do these days. As we started renting apartments (sometimes with roommates) and buying our own houses in the ‘80s and ‘90s, what we once called “home” became “our parents’ house” and “home” became our own spaces that we returned to at the end of a long workday, sometimes thousands of miles away.
Though we loved having more independence from our parents, having our own place meant we were now responsible for the rent or house payment, a new stress we never had before.
🗨 How did you feel when you got your first place away from your parents?
(Share your memories in the comments section at the end of this post.)
In Retrospect…
It would only be decades later that we’d truly come to appreciate our childhood houses and neighborhoods. Some of us even bought houses in our hometowns to raise our own families and run into each other from time to time.
Of course, in many cases, our hometowns have changed a lot since we grew up in them. In my hometown of Livonia, for instance, neighborhood stores and businesses have turned over. Many more office buildings have been developed. The trees on our suburban streets have grown. And our grade school, where some of my friends sent their own kids, now only goes to fourth grade instead of sixth grade.
For those of us (like me) who have moved out of state and visit Livonia to see family and friends, a wave of nostalgia washes through us when we visit our childhood homes and local haunts. We smell the old days in the greasy burgers at Bates Hamburgers that has stood on the corner of Farmington and 5 Mile in Livonia since 1954. We taste them in the ice cream at Han D Dip Dairy Barn a block away from Bates. And we hear them in the sounds of children playing at the elementary school playgrounds where we used to play with each other and, later, would take our own kids to play.
🗨 Did you have a deeper appreciation and sense of nostalgia for your childhood home and neighborhood later in life?
(Share your memories in the comments section at the end of this post.)
Remember when…
…you went to your 5-year high school reunion?
Around the same time my classmates and I were starting our careers, we celebrated our five-year reunion (1987). At the time, it seemed like just yesterday that we had last seen each other. We easily picked up where we had left off; laughing, partying, catching up and talking about old times—times we would start to forget by our 20-year reunion.
By that time, we had started to choose paths. We had either gone to college or we hadn’t. We were moving out of state or staying in Michigan. We were in a serious relationship or were still searching. (At 23 years old, I was married and living in another state but most of us were still unmarried and living in Michigan.)
Whatever path we had started on by then, it was just the beginning for all of us. There would still be many more diverging roads to come. More choices to make that we’d later wonder were the right ones.
But wondering what different choices would have led to was pointless because we would never know. We just had to hope and believe that whatever path we had taken was the one we were meant to be on.
🗨 What do you remember about your 5-year reunion?
(Share your memories in the comment section at the end of this post.)
We’ve reached the end of our college and post college stages of life. In post #12: Mid to Late ‘80s TV, Movies and Music, we’ll talk more ‘80s pop culture. Yippee-ki-yay!