No laptops in my era, either. I managed to do my thesis in LaTeX only because a student in another department made a stylesheet to the expected format. Figures and captions were a struggle back then.
But, we were 'appy in them days, though we wuz poor.
> Times have changed ... I wrote my PhD in TeX. Not LaTeX ... that hadn't been invented.
Brings to mind when I first learned TOPS-20 Emacs in law school (long story), circa 1980-81: A few of the CS grad students tolerantly looked down on Emacs as a crutch for newbies, because any real programmer would use TECO instead ....
(IIRC, that version of Emacs was written as a collection of TECO macros.)
But, we were 'appy in them days, though we wuz poor.