Sunday, August 22, 2010

What is True of This Year's College Freshmen?

Photo Credit: Earlham College
Each year around this time Beloit College releases what they call the Mindset List -- a list of important facts and events which influence the worldview and perspective that this year's college freshmen class brings with them.

This year's list, which is made up for the graduating class of 2014, represents those students who were born in 1992. You can read the complete list here but here are some entries that I found particularly interesting:
* For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

* Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

* Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

* Al Gore has always been animated.

* "Caramel macchiato" and "venti half-caf vanilla latte" have always been street corner lingo.

* With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.

* Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.

* Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

* Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.

* Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

* Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

* They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

* Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.

* Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

* Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

* Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

* They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

* Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.

* "Viewer Discretion" has always been an available warning on TV shows.

* The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum.

* Czechoslovakia has never existed.

* "Assisted Living" has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital.

* Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.

* Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

* Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.

* Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

* There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.

* American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

* Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

* The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
*They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.

* Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

* Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

* Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.

* Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

* Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

* They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.

* They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.

* It seems the Post Office has always been going broke.

* The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

* The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

* They've always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.

* Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
(h/t to Scot McKnight)

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