Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Mindset List -- Recalibrating Your Mind For The Class Of 2015 (Beloit.edu)

Every year the good professors at Beloit College publish a mindset list.  The purpose is to help old fogeys like me (and maybe you -- if you have kids, check with them) understand why their hip references to Two Live Crew and "Bueller? Bueller?" fall flat with incoming freshmen...uh, sorry, fresh-people.

This year's list is no different and a few of them really jumped out at me:
  • Andre the Giant, River Phoenix, Frank Zappa, Arthur Ashe and the Commodore 64 have always been dead.
  • There have nearly always been at least two women on the Supreme Court, and women have always commanded U.S. Navy ships.
  • As they’ve grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts have constantly fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.
  • Amazon has never been just a river in South America.
  • Grown-ups have always been arguing about health care policy.
  • Russian courts have always had juries.
  • They’ve always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe: Michael Who?
The full list is available on the Beloit website.

1 comment:

Pat said...

Dare I ask, Who is the strange guy who says nothing in that video? Weird. I suspect their pogs reference is a bit off as my 23 year old daughter played with them during the brief time they were a fad. I get blank stares when I refer to the Return key on the keyboard, something that went out when PCs came into vogue. Thanks, Kris. That's a fun link.