Beloit College Publishes Its Latest Mindset List

Every year, Beloit college publishes its "Mindset List." This list is updated annually to reflect what the latest crop of incoming freshman has experienced. Here are some of my favorites:

12. The KGB has never officially existed.
13. Text has always been hyper.
18. They have never understood the meaning of R.S.V.P.
30. There has always been a Cartoon Network.
51. Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
61. “Womyn” and “waitperson” have always been in the dictionary.

Read the whole thing here.

What Does The Class of 2014 Know?

When I was an undergrad (yeah, I know - a long time ago), I would often roll my eyes when a professor made a cultural reference that was about 30 years before my time. Now I increasingly find myself in the clueless professor's shoes. It's not surprising, since I've lived almost 3x as long as incoming freshmen.

Every year, Beloit College publishes a "mindset" list for the incoming freshman class. It lists some of the "cultural touchstones" are a part of the class's lives (who were mostly born in 1992). Here are some of the items on this year's list that stood out:

4. Al Gore has always been animated.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn't he?
64. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.

Read the whole thing here - interesting stuff, and it'll make some of you shake your heads at how the world has changed in such a short time.