Today's College Freshmen ....

[Jolie Rouge]

Just in case you weren't feeling too old today, this
will certainly change things. Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the faculty a sense of the mindset of this year's incoming freshmen.

Here's this year's list:

The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1983.

They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.

Their lifetime has always included AIDS.

Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.

The CD was introduced the year they were born.

They have always had an answering machine.

They have always had cable.

They cannot fathom not having a remote control.

Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.

Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.

They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.

They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.

They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.

They never heard: "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", or "DE plane Boss, DE plane".

They do not care who shot J. R. and have no idea who J. R. even is.

Michael Jackson has always been white.

McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.

They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.



Man, do I feel old .... ;(

[chort1313]

JOlie, I feel really OLD right now.. and I don't think I am.. lol

I like that post!:)

[asickchick]

If I didn't feel old before..I sure do now!!! My oldest was born in '83!!LOL:D

[car64683]

I was really feeling old reading this, until I read this one....
Michael Jackson has always been white.
Then I just laughed and laughed. ROFLMAO!!!

[Jolie Rouge]

[b]What today's college freshmen don't know - 2007

Beloit College is out with their annual list of what today's freshmen students aren't familiar with. It is always mindopening to see how things have changed. I teach kids at about this age or a few years younger and the Beloit list is always a nice reminder of the everyday facts that these kids just don't really know.

Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

What Berlin wall?

Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.

Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.

They never “rolled down” a car window.

Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.

They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.

They have grown up with bottled water.

General Motors has always been working on an electric car.

Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.

Pete Rose has never played baseball.

Rap music has always been mainstream.

Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!

“Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.

Music has always been “unplugged.”

Russia has always had a multi-party political system.

Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.

They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.

The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.

Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.

Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.

Eastern Airlines has never “earned their wings” in their lifetime.

No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.

Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.

Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN.

Katie Couric has always had screen cred.

Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.

They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”

They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.

When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.

Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.

They grew up in Wayne’s World.

U2 has always been more than a spy plane.

They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”

Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.

American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.

Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.

On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.

Fox has always been a major network.

They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.

The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.

Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.

Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.

Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.

They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.

Most phone calls have never been private.

High definition television has always been available.

Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.

Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.

Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.

China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.

Time has always worked with Warner.

Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.

The purchase of ivory has always been banned.

MTV has never featured music videos.

The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.

Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.

They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.

They’re always texting 1 n other.

They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.

They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.

They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars.”

Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.

Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.

Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.

The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.

Burma has always been Myanmar.

Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.

Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.


:eek:
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/2011.php

[Jolie Rouge]

Wear wristwatch? Use e-mail? Not for Class of '14
Dinesh Ramde, Associated Press Writer – Tue Aug 17, 9:24 am ET

MILWAUKEE – For students entering college this fall, e-mail is too slow, phones have never had cords and the computers they played with as kids are now in museums.

The Class of 2014 thinks of Clint Eastwood more as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry urging punks to "go ahead, make my day." Few incoming freshmen know how to write in cursive or have ever worn a wristwatch.

These are among the 75 items on this year's Beloit College Mindset List. The compilation, released Tuesday, is assembled each year by two officials at this private school of about 1,400 students in Beloit, Wis.

The list is meant to remind teachers that cultural references familiar to them might draw blank stares from college freshmen born mostly in 1992.

Of course, it can also have the unintended consequence of making people feel old.


Remember when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Dan Quayle or Rodney King were in the news? These kids don't.

Ever worry about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.? During these students' lives, Russians and Americans have always been living together in outer space.

Being aware of the generation gap helps professors craft lesson plans that are more meaningful, said Ron Nief, a former public affairs director at Beloit College and one of the list's creators.

Nief and English professor Tom McBride have assembled the Mindset List for 13 years. They say it's given them an unusual perspective on cultural shifts.

For example, as item No. 13 on the list says, "Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation."

With far edgier content available today, such as "South Park" or online videos that push the envelope, there's something quaint about recalling the hand-wringing that the MTV cartoon prompted, Nief said. "I think we do that with every generation — we look back and say, what were we getting so upset about?" he said. "A, kids outgrow it and B, in retrospect we realize it really wasn't that bad."

Another Mindset List item reflects a possible shift in Hollywood attitudes. Item No. 12 notes: "Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry."

A number of incoming freshmen said they partially agreed with the item, noting they were familiar with Eastwood's work as an actor even if they hadn't seen his films. "I know he directed movies but I also know he's supposed to be sort of bad-ass," said Aaron Ziontz, 18, from Seattle.

Jessica Peck, a 17-year-old from Portland, Ore., disagreed with two items on the list — one that says few students know how to write in cursive, and another that suggests this generation seldom if ever uses snail mail. "Snail mail's kind of fun. When I have time I like writing letters to friends and family," she said. "It's just a bit more personal. And yes, I write in cursive."

Peck did agree with the item pointing out that most teens have never used telephones with cords. "Yes, I've used them but only at my grandparents' house," she said.

That's the sort of comment that can make a person feel old. McBride jokes that he's not immune from feeling ancient just because he compiles the items. But the 65-year-old said the lists can also reveal a larger truth about tolerance.

The "Beavis and Butt-head" item suggests that maybe parents shouldn't overreact every time a controversy arises, he noted. For example, maybe it's no big deal if college freshmen misspell words when they text, and maybe their attention spans will be just fine even though they grew up in the Internet age, he said. "There's something about the resilience of human nature that renders these gloom-and-doom prophesies moot after a while," he said. "I can't say for sure, but it looks like the track record of these very anxious prophets has not been impressive over the years."

___

Online: Beloit College Mindset List: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100817/ap_on_re_us/us_mindset_list;_ylt=Aty.4SBT98NDTzAUI.z17pSs0NUE; _ylu=X3oDMTJjaGxpaWV1BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwODE3L3VzX 21pbmRzZXRfbGlzdARwb3MDNARzZWMDeW5fbW9zdF9wb3B1bGF yBHNsawN3ZWFyd3Jpc3R3YXQ-

Welcome to the Beloit College Mindset List for the entering college class of 2014

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.

[Jolie Rouge]

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 Angelinos 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. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…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 computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is 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 been an alternative to hospitals.

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 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. 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 Channel.

75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.

[Jolie Rouge]

Welcome to the Beloit College Mindset List for the entering class of 2017

The Mindset List was created at Beloit College in 1998 by Ron Nief and Tom McBride for the class of 2002, born in 1980. Now in its 15th year, it continues to reflect the world view of entering first year students. This year’s entering students in the class of 2017 were born in 1995.

What started as a witty way of saying to faculty colleagues "beware of hardening of the references," has turned into a globally reported and utilized guide to the intelligent if unprepared adolescent consciousness. It is requested by thousands of readers, reprinted in hundreds of print and electronic publications, and used for a wide variety of purposes. It has caught the imagination of the public and has drawn responses from around the world, including more than a million visitors to the website annually.

Class of 2017 List

When the Class of 2017 arrives on campus this fall, these digital natives will already be well-connected to each other. They are more likely to have borrowed money for college than their Boomer parents were, and while their parents foresee four years of school, the students are pretty sure it will be longer than that. Members of this year’s first year class, most of them born in 1995, will search for the academic majors reported to lead to good-paying jobs, and most of them will take a few courses taught at a distant university by a professor they will never meet.

The use of smart phones in class may indicate they are reading the assignment they should have read last night, or they may be recording every minute of their college experience…or they may be texting the person next to them. If they are admirers of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they may wonder whether a college degree is all it’s cracked up to be, even as their dreams are tempered by the reality that tech geniuses come along about as often as Halley’s Comet, which they will not glimpse until they reach what we currently consider “retirement age.”

Though they have never had the chicken pox, they are glad to have access to health insurance for a few more years. They will study hard, learn a good deal more, teach their professors quite a lot, and realize eventually that they will soon be in power. After all, by the time they hit their thirties, four out of ten voters will be of their generation. Whatever their employers may think of them, politicians will be paying close attention.

Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List, providing a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. Prepared by Beloit’s former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride, the list was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references. It quickly became an internationally monitored catalog of the changing worldview of each new college generation. Mindset List websites at themindsetlist.com and beloit.edu, as well as the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million visits annually.

The Mindset List for the Class of 2017

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead.

1. Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend.

2. They are the sharing generation, having shown tendencies to share everything, including possessions, no matter how personal.

3. GM means food that is Genetically Modified.

4. As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen.

5. “Dude” has never had a negative tone.

6. As their parents held them as infants, they may have wondered whether it was the baby or Windows 95 that had them more excited.

7. As kids they may well have seen Chicken Run but probably never got chicken pox.

8. Having a chat has seldom involved talking.

9. Gaga has never been baby talk.

10. They could always get rid of their outdated toys on eBay.

11. They have known only two presidents.

12. Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger.

13. PayPal has replaced a pen pal as a best friend on line.

14. Rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Skype accounts than with getting a driver’s license and car.

15. The U.S. has always been trying to figure out which side to back in Middle East conflicts.

16. A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning.

17. Threatening to shut down the government during Federal budget negotiations has always been an anticipated tactic.

18. Growing up with the family dog, one of them has worn an electronic collar, while the other has toted an electronic lifeline.

19. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid.

20. The Pentagon and Congress have always been shocked, absolutely shocked, by reports of sexual harassment and assault in the military.

21. Spray paint has never been legally sold in Chicago.

22. Captain Janeway has always taken the USS Voyager where no woman or man has ever gone before.

23. While they've grown up with a World Trade Organization, they have never known an Interstate Commerce Commission.

24. Courts have always been ordering computer network wiretaps.

25. Planes have never landed at Stapleton Airport in Denver.

26. Jurassic Park has always had rides and snack bars, not free-range triceratops and velociraptors.

27. Thanks to Megan's Law and Amber Alerts, parents have always had community support in keeping children safe.

28. With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address.

29. Java has never been just a cup of coffee.

30. Americans and Russians have always cooperated better in orbit than on earth.

31. Olympic fever has always erupted every two years.

32. Their parents have always bemoaned the passing of precocious little Calvin and sarcastic stuffy Hobbes.

33. In their first 18 years, they have watched the rise and fall of Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez.

34. Yahoo has always been looking over its shoulder for the rise of "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”

35. Congress has always been burdened by the requirement that they comply with the anti-discrimination and safety laws they passed for everybody else to follow.

36. The U.S. has always imposed economic sanctions against Iran.

37. The Celestine Prophecy has always been bringing forth a new age of spiritual insights.

38. Smokers in California have always been searching for their special areas, which have been harder to find each year.

39. They aren’t surprised to learn that the position of Top Spook at the CIA is an equal opportunity post.

40. They have never attended a concert in a smoke-filled arena.

41. As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work.

42. There has never been a national maximum speed on U.S. highways.

43. Don Shula has always been a fine steak house.

44. Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated.

45. They have never really needed to go to their friend’s house so they could study together.

46. They have never seen the Bruins at Boston Garden, the Trailblazers at Memorial Coliseum, the Supersonics in Key Arena, or the Canucks at the Pacific Coliseum.

47. Dayton, Ohio, has always been critical to international peace accords.

48. Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe.

49. They may have been introduced to video games with a new Sony PlayStation left in their cribs by their moms.

50. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii.

51. The Canadian Football League Stallions have always sung Alouette in Montreal after bidding adieu to Baltimore.

52. They have always been able to plug into USB ports

53. Olestra has always had consumers worried about side effects.

54. Washington, D.C., tour buses have never been able to drive in front of the White House.

55. Being selected by Oprah’s Book Club has always read “success.”

56. There has never been a Barings Bank in England.

57. Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing.

58. New York’s Times Square has always had a splash of the Magic Kingdom in it.

59. Bill Maher has always been politically incorrect.

60. They have always known that there are “five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes" in a year.

http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2017/