If you were taking a photography class in the nineties, you would have probably been using B&W film: it's easier to learn to develop yourself, which meant it was easy to start playing around in the darkroom with the various ways you could alter a reel of film by playing with how you developed and printed it. Color film's a lot more complex. If not for a hurricane and a few cross-country moves I'd probably still have some prints of B&W photos I took in a college class, using the 35mm camera I inherited from my father.

If you were someone who was serious about photography to the extent of "I have a nice camera and know how to use it" - maybe it's your hobby, maybe you're somewhere on the path from "likes to take photos" to "makes a living as A Photographer" - then you would have been aware of working in B&W as a valid artistic choice that changes the overall mood of the imagery. A sharp, crisp B&W photo felt pretty modern versus a faded old one.