Beloit College Mindset List for class of 2011

redpaint

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I don't know why I read things like this I feel so old after reading them. But it does show how much things has changed in our life times.
Beloit College Mindset List for class of 2011

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20378610/#storyContinued

BELOIT, Wis. - 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 and Abbie Hoffman have always been dead.

1. What Berlin wall?

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

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

4. They never “rolled down” a car window.

5. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.

6. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.

7. They have grown up with bottled water.

8. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.

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

10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.

11. Rap music has always been mainstream.

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

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

14. Music has always been “unplugged.”

15. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.

16. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

26. Katie Couric has always had screen cred.

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

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

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

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

31. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.

32. They grew up in Wayne’s World.

33. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.

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

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

36. American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.

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

38. 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.

39. Fox has always been a major network.

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

41. The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.

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

43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.

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

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

46. Most phone calls have never been private.

47. High definition television has always been available.

48. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.

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

50. Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.

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

52. Time has always worked with Warner.

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

54. The purchase of ivory has always been banned.

55. MTV has never featured music videos.

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

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

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

59. They’re always texting 1 n other.

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

61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.

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

63. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.

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

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

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

67. Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.

68. Burma has always been Myanmar.

69 Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.

70. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_re_us/mindset_list

To college freshmen, GPS has always been there

By DINESH RAMDE, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 19, 7:51 AM ET



MILWAUKEE - Students entering college this fall have lived their whole lives in a digital world — where GPS has always been available, phones have always had caller ID and tax returns could always be filed online.

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The incoming freshmen, born mostly in 1990, also grew up knowing only Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."

Those are some of the 60 cultural landmarks on the Beloit College Mindset List, an annual compilation that offers a glimpse of the world as seen through the eyes of each incoming class. This year's list is being released Tuesday by the private school of 1,300 near the Wisconsin-Illinois state line.

The school started producing the list in 1998 to remind professors that references familiar to them might draw blank stares from their students.

"Watergate used to be a common reference," said Ron Nief, the school's director of public affairs, who assembles the list. "But a few years ago I asked some students if they knew what Watergate was and they said that was where Monica Lewinsky lived."

Some entries on this year's list are products that have been around for the lifetimes of the Class of 2012, including karaoke machines, plastic soft drink bottles, Windows 3.0 and higher and the Nintendo Game Boy.

Other cultural markers are all but unknown to them — IBM typewriters, Roseanne Barr's tortured version of the National Anthem, Pee-wee Herman's "Playhouse" and gas-station attendants who fix flat tires or offer to check under the hood.

The purpose of the Mindset List goes beyond reminding professors to update their references, said Tom McBride, an English professor at Beloit who helps Nief compile the list.

"It also prevents students from thinking that the way something is now is the way it's always been," he said.

For example, one entry had to be updated within the past month after the Green Bay Packers traded quarterback Brett Favre to the New York Jets after a 16-year career in Wisconsin. "The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same quarterback," reads the revised No. 46.

That stunned incoming freshman Ben Zook of Seattle, who said Favre is one of his generation's athletic idols, along with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.

"I mean, for as long as I can remember, Brett Favre was the man there," said Zook, 18. "It's almost crazy to think he could retire or be with another team."

New freshman Dana Wierzbicki, 18, said her favorite item on the list was the first: "Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team."

"I'm a huge Harry Potter fan," said Wierzbicki, from Niles, Ill. "I wish it was sort of true — being on Quidditch with him would be kind of cool."

Every time the list comes out, McBride said, the school hears from people around the world who say it makes them feel as though life is passing them by.

"We say join the club. It makes us feel old, too," he said.

Time seems to pass more slowly for kids because they're doing more things for the first time, he speculated. But when a person gets older and does the same things over and over, the routine makes time seem to speed up.

When the 2006 list came out, McBride reassured people by telling them it was the trends and fashions that had grown old, not them.

This year, he struck a more philosophical tone.

"It's easy to be envious of youth," he said. "But if you've got a certain degree of wisdom and your body hasn't fallen apart yet, you may be at the best time of your life."
 
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