The annual Beloit College Mindset List is out...and once again, I feel old

Wear a wristwatch? Use e-mail? Not for Class of '14: Annual list of 75 items that shape incoming freshmen's cultural references released


The Beloit College Mindset List collects various aspects of popular culture and other items that incoming college freshmen simply have never experienced or won't remember. The purpose is to be more mindful when connecting with this young people when teaching. The unintended effect is to make the rest of us feel old. Here's some doozies from the latest list:

• Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
  
• Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
  
• 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.
  
• Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
  
• 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.
  
• Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
  
• Nirvana is on the classic oldies station. [Which isn't all that surprising, as Kurt Cobain was born the same year I was--1967.]

There are 75 items on the list. Check them out and see how old you feel.

It's time again

for the Beloit College Mindset List, the list of things that the entering freshman class has not experienced.

Here were the ones that got me. This is for the class of 2013 (assuming we make it through the hoopla of 2012), for those born in 1991:

Dr. Seuss, Miles Davis, Gene Roddenberry, and Freddie Mercury have been dead their entire lives. They've probably never seen a card catalogue, much less used it to find a book. The KGB didn't exist at any time in their lives, and (this is for YKWIA), state abbreviations have never had periods during their lifetimes.

Check out the list for more things to make you feel old (like the fact that 'Saved By the Bell' was already off the air....)