It’s official – I am old

Every year, Beloit College publishes a ‘Mindset List’ – what the current class of college freshman base their worldview on.  I look forward to reading it each year it comes out.  I used to be able to mentally plug one of my girls into the freshman group but alas, they have all graduated from college and are now fully mature and independent.  Which leaves me squarely in the class titled ‘OLD’.  As I read this list, it only confirms that fact.

I’ve picked out a few things on the Mindset List for the class of 2016 that are especially interesting to me but you can read the whole list here.  And here is part of their list from 2009 that I posted on the blog.

For this generation of entering college students (born in 1994) these things are true:

• They have never seen an airplane ‘ticket’
  
• They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it
  
• Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf
  
• They have no use for a radio at all
  
• They have lived in an era of instant stardom and self-proclaimed celebrities, famous for being famous
  
• A significant percentage of them will enter college already displaying some hearing loss
• They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes”
  
• There have always been blue M&Ms, but no tan ones
  
• They watch television everywhere but on a television
  
• Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes
  
• Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected by well-meaning friends

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My kids find it hard to believe but one day they too will be looking at a list that makes them feel old.  Only Beloit will publish it via hologram or send directly to their brains through cyberspace.

I'm going to listen to the radio now.

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