Saturday, February 2, 2008

The Mindset List

Beloit College has posted its annual Mindset List for the class of 2011. These are always fun to go through, but I wonder if they make other people feel as out of touch with their own generation as the lists for my years (I started college as part of the class of 2005, but graduated in 2004, so I claim both lists) did for me.

2004 highlights
12. They have always bought telephones, rather than rent them from AT&T. [Very true. I remember reading Erma Bombeck's The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank and being absolutely aghast at the fact that her phones were limited to what the phone company rep offered.]

25. Three Mile Island is ancient history, and nuclear accidents happen in other countries. [I spent one summer living in an apartment at Penn State Harrisburg, and every morning I drove out of there looking at the TMI smokestacks.]

31. Bear Bryant has never coached at Alabama. [Come on, I don't pay attention to football, but even I know that - granted, I learned it from reading Miss Manners.]

37. Woodstock is a bird or a reunion, not a cultural touchstone. [I beg to differ. I was hardly the only one who went through a hippie phase in middle school.]

43. They only know Madonna singing American Pie. [Items like this one are where they really lose me. Does the Beloit administration actually believe that none of their students grew up listening to "Like a Virgin"?]

47. They have never used a bottle of "White Out." [I have no idea what they're after here - maybe a reference to the fact that we use computers? Actually, this makes me think of the unusual popularity of Wite-Out pens among my middle school classmates.]

2005 highlights:

3. The New Kids on the Block are over the hill. [Now? Yes. But when I was in elementary school, they were huge.]

25. Sarajevo was a war zone, not an Olympic host. [No argument here.]

39. They have probably never used carbon paper and do not know what cc and bcc mean. [When I was little, I would accumulate the carbon paper from bank deposit slips and such, because it was so cool to play with.]

41. Major newspapers have always been printed in color. [For the past couple days, my local paper has been printing in black and white. It's hard to get used to.]

(via Boing Boing)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Re: 2004 #43 Madonna, "American Pie", etc...

I assume that was pointed more at kids knowing only her cover of that song, rather than the Don McLean original, not that being the only song of her catalogue they knew. I can say certainly that "Like a Prayer" had an odd revival in popularity in 2005. And in France the 80s never really left (or 1968 for that matter).

Sarah Rettger said...

Fair point. Although I don't remember Madonna's cover being all that big when it came out - no question the McLean version is vastly better.