August 22, 2012

• Where Were You In 1994? (2016 Mindset List)

  If It's Tuesday, the latest Mindset List is available on Beloit College's website!  Each year Beloit College in Wisconsin releases "The Mindset List" to help teachers realize that incoming freshmen see the world a little differently than they do. I published last year's list here on WhenWordsCollide with little fanfare and found that a lot of readers look forward to this. I've annotated the list (in yellow highlight) with some remarks sort of specific to my own "mindset" when I attended college as part of the Class of 1974! So without further ado, I present, direct from the front steps of Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin:

  The Mindset List for the Class of 2016

  For this generation of entering college students, born in 1994, Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead.

  1.They should keep their eyes open for Justin Bieber or Dakota Fanning at freshman orientation. Famous freshmen back in the day could have included Pierce Brosnan, porn star Ron Jeremy, Hulk Hogan, and Cyndi Lauper 

  2.They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics.”
  3.The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them.
  4.Michael Jackson’s family, not the Kennedys, constitutes “American Royalty.” Michael Jackson had #1 hit songs in the early 70s, as lead singer of his family's group The Jackson Five.
  5.If they miss The Daily Show, they can always get their news on YouTube. News on TV was limited to about an hour or so around 6pm, and seemed to be filled with war news from Vietnam, until 1972. Major American cities had two or three daily newspapers, plus local papers and "green sheets" with little actual news but lots of advertisements.  
  6.Their lives have been measured in the fundamental particles of life: bits, bytes, and bauds.
  7.Robert De Niro is thought of as Greg Focker's long-suffering father-in-law, not as Vito Corleone or Jimmy Conway. Robert de Niro seemed to come from nowhere (along with director Martin Scorsese) when Taxi Driver came out while I was in college.
  8.Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge. Jimmy Carter had a brother Billy, who drank beer, and who had a "brand name' called "Billy Beer."
  9.They have never seen an airplane “ticket.”
  10.On TV and in films, the ditzy dumb blonde female generally has been replaced by a couple of Dumb and Dumber males.

  11.The paradox "too big to fail" has been, for their generation, what "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" was for their grandparents'. My parents had "The American Dream". We had "Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll".
  12.For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department. The only women in politics were in either India or Israel.
  13.They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it. That's what skycaps (and in train travel, redcaps) were for!
  14.There has always been football in Jacksonville but never in Los Angeles. Can you imagine? In L.A. we had the Rams and the Raiders (for a while)
  15.Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all. 8 Track tape players were offered in some auto makes as optional equipment. You could punch "channels" on the tape just like switching stations on the radio! 
  16.Since they've been born, the United States has measured progress by a 2 percent jump in unemployment and a 16 cent rise in the price of a first class postage stamp. First Class postage in 1974 was 8 cents and a postcard cost a penny.
  17.Benjamin Braddock, having given up both a career in plastics and a relationship with Mrs. Robinson, could be their grandfather. There were exciting new careers in telecommunications and computer science!
  18.Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf.
  19.The Green Bay Packers have always celebrated with the Lambeau Leap.
  20.Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected quietly by well-meaning friends. Lots of feminists burned their bras in the early 70s.
  21.A significant percentage of them will enter college already displaying some hearing loss. Same with us, owing to loud rock and roll music experienced in clubs and concerts.
  22.The Real World has always stopped being polite and started getting real on MTV. "Reality TV" began in 1973 when PBS broadcast the Loud family in "An American Family".
  23.Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles. Women were to be seen and not heard. Er, sorry, that was children. Women's place was in the home. Betty Frieden's N.O.W. was quite active, Gloria Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1972.
  24.White House security has never felt it necessary to wear rubber gloves when gay groups have visited. Gays were still pretty much in the closet back in the early 70s.
  25.They have lived in an era of instant stardom and self-proclaimed celebrities, famous for being famous. Hmm. Tiny Tim got married on The Tonight Show. Andy Warhol said everyone gets 15 min. of fame back in 1968. 
  26.Having made the acquaintance of Furby at an early age, they have expected their toy friends to do ever more unpredictable things. Early talking toys usually malfunctioned, especially if they contained tape players, which caused Teddy Ruxpin to tell stories r-e-a-l s-l-o-w-l-y. 
  27.Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for “save,” a telephone for “phone,” and a snail mail envelope for “mail” have oddly decorated their tablets and smart phone screens. Aging boomers think it's kewl for their ringtones to ape the old jingle of analog phones.
  28.Star Wars has always been just a film, not a defense strategy.
  29.They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.” In the early 70s, there was no videotape yet!
  30.There have always been blue M&Ms, but no tan ones.’
  31.Along with online viewbooks, parents have always been able to check the crime stats for the colleges their kids have selected.
  32.Newt Gingrich has always been a key figure in politics, trying to change the way America thinks about everything. William F. Buckley was the most respected political commentator on the right.
  33.They have come to political consciousness during a time of increasing doubts about America’s future. So did we. The same American president who stopped the war in Vietnam was also the only sitting president to resign.
  34.Billy Graham is as familiar to them as Otto Graham was to their parents. We used to make smores with graham crackers in big fire pits on the beach, (which are slowly all disappearing from California. The fire pits, not the smores, which can be bought at the local market nowadays.
  35.Probably the most tribal generation in history, they despise being separated from contact with their similar-aged friends.
  36.Stephen Breyer has always been an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
  37.Martin Lawrence has always been banned from hosting Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live was a new program, and easily the most amazing and groundbreaking program ever put on TV. We all laughed on Saturday night but couldn't remember what happened on the show at all the next morning if we'd been drugged up enough.
  38.Slavery has always been unconstitutional in Mississippi, and Southern Baptists have always been apologizing for supporting it in the first place.
  39.The Metropolitan Opera House in New York has always translated operas on seatback screens.
  40.A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space. Astronauts were constantly going up into space, and we soon forgot most of their names or any of their missions.
  41.Good music programmers are rock stars to the women of this generation, just as guitar players were for their mothers. Chuck Berry was a rock god but would only play his agreed upon set list and then get out of the theater or club before you could say "Johnny B. Goode!"
  42.Gene therapy has always been an available treatment.
  43.They were too young to enjoy the 1994 World Series, but then no one else got to enjoy it either.
  44.The folks have always been able to grab an Aleve when the kids started giving them a migraine. "Mother's Little Helpers" for relaxation and trucker's "bennies" to get you going.
  45.While the iconic TV series for their older siblings was the sci-fi show Lost, for them it’s Breaking Bad, a gritty crime story motivated by desperate economic circumstances. Laugh In! The Smothers Brothers!
  46.Simba has always had trouble waiting to be King.
  47.Before they purchase an assigned textbook, they will investigate whether it is available for rent or purchase as an e-book. Schoolbooks were avaiiable in the student store. New copies were ridiculously expensive. Used copies were a bit less ridiculously expensive.
  48.They grew up, somehow, without the benefits of Romper Room.
  49.There has always been a World Trade Organization.
  50.L.L. Bean hunting shoes have always been known as just plain Bean Boots.
  51.They have always been able to see Starz on Direct TV. When you drove outside the city limits, you might be able to see stars in the sky.
  52.Ice skating competitions have always been jumping matches.
  53.There has always been a Santa Clause.
  54.NBC has never shown A Wonderful Life more than twice during the holidays.
  55.Mr. Burns has replaced J.R.Ewing as the most shot-at man on American television. President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. Robert Kennedy. At the time the most shot at men on American television were real people.
  56.They have always enjoyed school and summer camp memories with a digital yearbook.
  57.Herr Schindler has always had a List; Mr. Spielberg has always had an Oscar. Mr. Spielberg was helping to keep America's beaches unoccupied during the summer of 1974 when he released the first "blockbuster" movie, Jaws.
  58.Selena's fans have always been in mourning.
  59.They know many established film stars by their voices on computer-animated blockbusters.
  60.History has always had its own channel. There were 13 channels on the top dial of the TV, about 7 of which held programming. On the bottom dial, was PBS and a couple of local "independent" channels.
  61.Thousands have always been gathering for “million-man” demonstrations in Washington, D.C. Campus protests, 'sit ins' and marches, pretty much a defining and dividing line in the late 60s, were a little less violent by the time I attended college.
  62.Television and film dramas have always risked being pulled because the story line was too close to the headlines from which they were ”ripped.” We would voraciously read through the listings in the TV Guide to find recent four year old films which were airing "for the first time" on our home screens.
  63.TheTwilight Zone involves vampires, not Rod Serling. The Zone had been off the air for a decade. Rod Serling's "new" series Night Gallery was cancelled in 1973.
  64.Robert Osborne has always been introducing Hollywood history on TCM. Osborne was still writing his book : 50 Years of Oscar.
  65.Little Caesar has always been proclaiming “Pizza Pizza.” You went out to get pizza. It didn't come to you.
  66.They have no recollection of when Arianna Huffington was a conservative.
  67.Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has always been officially recognized with clinical guidelines.
  68.They watch television everywhere but on a television. Our new family TV was made of wood, had a massive 25" screen, showed programs in COLOR, and you could play phonograph records after opening a door in the top of this gigantic piece of furniture!
  69.Pulp Fiction’s meal of a "Royale with Cheese" and an “Amos and Andy milkshake” has little or no resonance with them. Pulp Fiction director Quentin Tarantino started out as a video store employee. In 1974 there was no home video nor any video stores. Quentin would have been 10 years old.
  70.Point-and-shoot cameras are soooooo last millennium. Meet the Swinger. The Polariod Swinger. 2x2 black and white photos at your fingertips! (till 1970)
  71.Despite being preferred urban gathering places, two-thirds of the independent bookstores in the United States have closed for good during their lifetimes. The central meeting place of a lot of colleges was the "library" a big building containing thousands of these items they called "books".
  72.Astronauts have always spent well over a year in a single space flight.
  73.Lou Gehrig's record for most consecutive baseball games played has never stood in their lifetimes.
  74.Genomes of living things have always been sequenced.
  75.The Sistine Chapel ceiling has always been brighter and cleaner. And it was painted by Charlton Heston!
  Copyright© 2012 Beloit College
  Mindset List is a registered trademark

  REQUIRED READING: The 2015 Mindset List as presented on WhenWordsCollide

  Posted: August 21, 2012 1:14 PM

  • 10:29 am
  • 65 Comments