Originally Posted By friendofdd Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and technology is just too slow. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually. The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat. Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older. 0Share0 0Share -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014 Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992. For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead. 1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive. 2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. 3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.” 4. Al Gore has always been animated. 5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along. 6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High. 7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo. 8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities. 9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend. 10. 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. 11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis. 12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry. 13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation. 14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine. 15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause. 16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways. 17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection. 18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess. 19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone. 20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed. 21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn. 22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech. 23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars. 24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording. 25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks. 26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides. 27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive. 28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. 29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown. 30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows. 31. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum. 32. Czechoslovakia has never existed. 33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen. 34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital. 35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall. 36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones. 37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.” 38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. 39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes. 40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics. 41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam. 42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict. 43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. 44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs. 45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college. 46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station. 47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents. 48. Someone has always gotten married in space. 49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States. 50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps. 51. Food has always been irradiated. 52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church. 53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he? 54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy. 55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties. 56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street. 57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife. 58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog. 59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone. 60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48. 61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else. 62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine. 63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies. 64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely. 65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus. 66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church. 67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court. 68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S. 69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke. 70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping. 71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing. 72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been. 73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated. 74. They've always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel. 75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Most of those are pretty good. There are a few that are a stretch (Honda has only bee at the Indy 500 for the last few years, kids still understand that pointing at your wrist is the universal signal for time, and most of them probably have no clue who Dan Quail is, which makes the potatoe point irrelevant), but a lot of them are pretty true. One of the things that I've always thought was interesting in history classes was how close I was to the Cold War, without being old enough to remember when they tore down the Berlin Wall. It's starting to weird me out that kids who are mid-elementary school age were born after 9/11. I guess there are things like that for every generation, and that's what this list was trying to compile, but a lot of it just seems like it was taken a little too far. Overall, it's a very interesting set of points, especially since I'm not that much older than the subjects of the article, but many of them don't apply to me. How quickly things change... >>They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line.<< Now that's just silly. True academia these days is discovering how to access research information from books and journal in an on-line database. It's like Hannah Montana: the best of both worlds. : )
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo That is really funny, and scary. To my elders here, how do we cope with this. I think of new bands and they are nearly a decade old. lol
Originally Posted By LuLu Wow, do I feel old! However, all this gives us a different (imo better) perspective. So I don't feel a need to cope with that aspect. Not sure what you mean, dave?
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo I suppose I am finding the transition difficult at the mo. I was a mess when I say Toy Story 3. The kids are growing up too fast. And I find myself listening to the oldies stations more and more. It is a part of nature for generations to evolve, but I think it is because my younger brothers have not been given long, it really brings it home how little time we have here. I suppose I am asking how to make it a little less painful, the realisation that it is about the younger generations?
Originally Posted By LuLu Oh Dave *hugs* You have a different perspective b/c of your brothers. But I still am not on your wavelength, "the realisation that it is about the younger generations?" Is it? We all have our role to play. Younger aren't better than older, just less experienced. Maybe I'm not understanding you? But I sure do understand how life changes when your kids are all grown up!
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Thanks Lulu. I suppose it was because in my 20's and early 30's I was so career motivated. It was about climbing the ladder, making my mark, growing earning potential etc. I became a dad, and it continued, but I would try to balance things. Now, I really just want to be the dad. Sure career wise I want to do a good job and make a difference. But it is less and less about me, and more about them (brothers and offspring). I want to make the most of being there for them, but also giving them their sense of independence, but every year seems to fly much quicker than the last. I know I can't stop it, but I wonder how I can savour it better, and more importantly find peace knowing that it is natural. An animated feature should not make a grown man cry and then ring him down for 2 days, should it?
Originally Posted By LuLu TS3 was a tearjerker, but certainly shouldn't bring you down for days. I don't know how you find that peace. It seems like it should come naturally ?? And you seem to savor your family so well, with wonderful vacations! It's natural as you move towards your 40s to shift from "what I can do" to "what I empower others to do." That would include your kids and people thru work or volunteering. Of course you enable your wife to be available to your children, which is a blessing. Still not sure I'm "getting it," but if you want to talk some time, let me know
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Thanks Lulu, I am not sure if I am getting it either. Lol. I think the fact that my teen brothers (youngest 14) are not likely to see 30, coupled with ill parents, and uncertain personal economics, makes me a little cautious. WE do try to give the kids the best start we can without hopefully spoiling them (in terms of things) too much.I think it hits me hard that if I follow the genetic trend on both sides of the family I have 15 - 20 years left. My first 35 years were about trying to change the world for the better, now it is more about savouring and enabling those I love.
Originally Posted By LuLu I can understand feeling a little "iffy" with so many relatives having health problems. I've read that our lifestyle trumps our genes tho, so keep positive, be healthy and - most important from what I read - get enough sleep! I know that's really tough for busy people, but try
Originally Posted By Labuda "1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive. " That jumped out at me in the intro and then as #1 on the list. Just astounding.
Originally Posted By Labuda Oh, and I'd love to see the Mindset for College Class of 1995 - I'll have to see if I can find it.
