Do you want to feel old?? Read this list. This year’s installment of entering college freshmen’s life will make you want to reach for the closest walking stick. The list is compiled annually by Ron Nief and Tom McBride for Beloit College. The earliest one I could find was for 2002 which was after I graduated college anyway. No list for my year, but I could identify with more of the 2002 list than this one.
The Mindset List for the Class of 2016 (exerpt)
- For this generation of entering college students, born in 1994, Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead.
- They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics.”
- Michael Jackson’s family, not the Kennedys, constitutes “American Royalty.”
- If they miss The Daily Show, they can always get their news on YouTube.
- Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge.
- They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it.
- Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all.
- Since they’ve been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16 cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp.
- Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf.
- Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected quietly by well-meaning friends.
- A significant percentage of them will enter college already displaying some hearing loss.
- The Real World has always stopped being polite and started getting real on MTV.
- Having made the acquaintance of Furby at an early age, they have expected their toy friends to do ever more unpredictable things.
- Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for “save,” a telephone for “phone,” and a snail mail envelope for “mail” have oddly decorated their tablets and smart phone screens.
- They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.”
- They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America’s future.
- Probably the most tribal generation in history, they despise being separated from contact with their similar-aged friends.
- Martin Lawrence has always been banned from hosting Saturday Night Live.
- Before they purchase an assigned textbook, they will investigate whether it is available for rent or purchase as an e-book.
- History has always had its own channel.
- Little Caesar has always been proclaiming “Pizza Pizza.”
- They watch television everywhere but on a television.
- Point-and-shoot cameras are soooooo last millennium.
- Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes.
To read the complete list and hear more about the yearly list, please visit The Mindset List.
*Borrowed from the above website.
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