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Remember how the restless young, hungry for experience and authenticity, wandered the land seeking out adventure, sensations and obscure gurus? Remember Jack and Dean? Well, that was then. Now the restless young ride around in a wildly decorated bus and get college credit. It’s sort of like the Merry Pranksters meet Contemporary Civilization 101. Sort of like Lollapalooza with final exams. Sort of like sowing tame oats.

Consider the 18 students from seven colleges who rolled into town this week, a third of the way through a national tour organized by the University of New Orleans, for 12 credits. In a 24-hour period they met and talked with three major novelists, one of them a Nobel laureate; one Pulitzer Prize-winning great American historian; one significant playwright, a rabble-rousing lawyer; the editor of a news magazine, some diplomats and a blues singer.

“I think what we’re doing is more authentic than what the Beats did,” said Grant Allen, a 21-year-old senior at New Orleans. He was wearing a tie. “They just explored the cultures of New York and San Francisco, while we are learning about the whole country, tying together blues, civil rights, foreign policy. And we’re doing it in a positive way.”

Stacy James, a student from Haskell Indian Nations University, in Lawrence, Kan., said: “It has been real stimulating. Not just all the famous people. It’s the stuff that goes on in the bus, the readings, and meeting ordinary folks like those we met when we helped build a house for a poor family in Americus, Ga.”

Ms. James, who had never been to New York City before, said she really wanted to see Strawberry Fields in Central Park. “I hope there will be time for that,” she said.

At that moment, the bus was on its way from the offices of Newsweek, where the students had heard Richard M. Smith, the editor, explain how covers were chosen, to the New York Public Library, where the young people were to meet with Toni Morrison. They had all read her novel “Beloved” as part of the readings assigned by Douglas Brinkley, their professor and guide.

“Wow,” said Matthew McConochie, one of the Yale men aboard, looking forward to the experience. “Yesterday, we saw Kurt Vonnegut on Long Island and he gave me a tomato from his garden. It was a really great tomato.”

At the library, one student asked Ms. Morrison whether she “resorted to metaphor because it was too hard to get all the emotion onto the page.”

She said: “No, one of the things I find exciting is working within the frustrations of language. Only 26 letters and some punctuation marks to get it all down. That’s what excites writers.”

Another student asked if she ever found herself identifying too strongly with her characters. “No,” she said, laughing gently. “I always know they are characters.”

And when she was asked how she had reacted when she learned about winning the Nobel Prize, she said she knew it was a time to celebrate fully and not to pretend that it really did not matter. “I gathered all my friends and we had a wonderful party.” The students clapped.

Back on the bus, they traveled to the Sara Delano Roosevelt House on East 65th Street to meet with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. It turned out that the house was locked and no one had the key. Professor Brinkley, thinking fast, went into the Mayfair Hotel across the street and persuaded the management to let them use a lounge off the lobby.

There Mr. Schlesinger spoke about the New Deal and compared the passionate criticism that Franklin D. Roosevelt attracted to the kinds of attacks being heaped on President Clinton. One student asked the historian how he had avoided becoming a racist, having grown up when he did. He gave credit to his parents and said his views and character were also shaped by Reinhold Niebuhr. He realized that few if any of the students had ever heard of the theologian, so he provided a biographical sketch.

The students took notes and then, just before they left, they asked Mr. Schlesinger for his autograph, as during their first day in New York they had asked for the signatures of William M. Kunstler, Amiri Baraka and Bo Diddley Jr.

They drove to the United Nations to attend a diplomatic reception. Then as dusk was descending they went to the Chelsea Hotel to meet with Jay McInerney. They asked him if he liked the movie of his novel “Bright Lights, Big City.” He said he didn’t. They asked him why he wrote it in the second person. He said it was the best way to maintain an ironic tone. They asked him whether it wouldn’t be a good idea if MTV employed the vitality of youth to do more meaningful things. Mr. McInerney agreed, but said he was afraid the network would probably have trouble presenting anything that took longer than three minutes.