Maybe I'm old. Maybe I had old-fashioned parents. But it boggles my mind that people can get to be old enough to go to college without knowing how to mail things.
When I lived in NYC 15 years ago, I didn't have to think about stamps - every newsstand would carry them, and there's always going to be a newsstand on the way to the subway. And I'd need stamps regularly.
Now I'm living in West Coast suburbia, and the only time I need stamps is when I want to send a postcard to a friend (and I'm being old-fashioned doing that).
To do that, I have to make my way to the post office (I'm not aware of other places that carry stamps), which might or might not be open when I have time to do that (weekend hours got nixed). Or I could order the stamps online, but then I'd have to wait for a while to actually use them.
Is this hard? No. Is this an effort? Yes. Enough of an effort that I buy stamps by the dozen and carry them with me all the time for months just in case I travel somewhere and decide to mail that one postcard -- because I know that once I'm busy enough, I won't make this effort.
Voting should not require an effort.
That's not even getting into the UX of mail which I find hostile. For instance, why don't envelopes have clear "From:", "To:", and "Place stamp here" fields? Yes, you don't need them after you send your hundredth correspondence. But a new mail user would have to Google that nonsense. There's no way in which it is obvious. (And I've sent letters to myself by accidentally confusing the from/to fields as a kid).
And it doesn't surprise me that college freshmen wouldn't know how to mail things. Their parents were responsible for bills back when that was still done by mail... which was about when these kids were born. The need to mail anything is extraordinarily rare, and last time I've needed to mail things was when I sold something on Amazon/eBay.
Aside from selling, I can't even remember what I needed to send anything. Postcards and gifts aren't a need, and to that end -- I didn't even have out-of-state friends as a college freshman. I could just give things instead of mailing them.
So maybe you are old :) Even with that - when was the last time you mailed anything? And when was the last time you needed to mail anything that wasn't a postcard/gift?
When I lived in NYC 15 years ago, I didn't have to think about stamps - every newsstand would carry them, and there's always going to be a newsstand on the way to the subway. And I'd need stamps regularly.
Now I'm living in West Coast suburbia, and the only time I need stamps is when I want to send a postcard to a friend (and I'm being old-fashioned doing that).
To do that, I have to make my way to the post office (I'm not aware of other places that carry stamps), which might or might not be open when I have time to do that (weekend hours got nixed). Or I could order the stamps online, but then I'd have to wait for a while to actually use them.
Is this hard? No. Is this an effort? Yes. Enough of an effort that I buy stamps by the dozen and carry them with me all the time for months just in case I travel somewhere and decide to mail that one postcard -- because I know that once I'm busy enough, I won't make this effort.
Voting should not require an effort.
That's not even getting into the UX of mail which I find hostile. For instance, why don't envelopes have clear "From:", "To:", and "Place stamp here" fields? Yes, you don't need them after you send your hundredth correspondence. But a new mail user would have to Google that nonsense. There's no way in which it is obvious. (And I've sent letters to myself by accidentally confusing the from/to fields as a kid).
And it doesn't surprise me that college freshmen wouldn't know how to mail things. Their parents were responsible for bills back when that was still done by mail... which was about when these kids were born. The need to mail anything is extraordinarily rare, and last time I've needed to mail things was when I sold something on Amazon/eBay.
Aside from selling, I can't even remember what I needed to send anything. Postcards and gifts aren't a need, and to that end -- I didn't even have out-of-state friends as a college freshman. I could just give things instead of mailing them.
So maybe you are old :) Even with that - when was the last time you mailed anything? And when was the last time you needed to mail anything that wasn't a postcard/gift?