I was a sophmore, having transfered to Madison from what was then Oshkosh State University. An "upstate" Wisconsin native, everything about UW-Madison was strange and wondrous. The draft lottery was one of a string of extraordinary experiences that year — the protests and riots; the African-American student strike, etc.
I don’t have anything original to say about the lottery itself. I was enormously relieved to get a high number. I made myself I-A, got safely through the required time without being drafted, and considered myself lucky, which I was.
Only when my best friend from high school, who could not afford college, was killed while in the army some 18 months or so later, did it really hit me about a "class" of society fighting and dying, whilst another studied and protested. We thought we were fighting "the war at home" and so we were. But even among those of good will on both sides, there remains a divide between those who went to Vietnam and those who didn’t that can never truly be bridged.