Want to better understand the generation that started college this fall? Each year Beloit College assembles its Mindset List for that year’s new students, offering insights into the life experience of the emerging generation. This year’s full list can be found online. Here are some of the more interesting characteristics of the Class of 2015:
There has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway.
Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.
States and “Velcro parents” always have required they wear bike helmets.
The only significant labor disputes in their lifetimes have been in major-league sports.
There always have been at least two women on the Supreme Court, and women always have commanded some U.S. Navy ships.
As the students have grown up on websites and cell phones, adult experts constantly have fretted about their alleged deficits of empathy and concentration.
American tax forms always have been available in Spanish.
Amazon never has been just a river in South America.
O.J. Simpson always has been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
They’ve always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.
Faux Christmas trees always have outsold real ones.
Music always has been available via free downloads.
Sears never has sold anything out of a “Big Book” that could also serve as a doorstop.
No state ever has failed to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
They’ve always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe. Michael who?
They’ve broken up with significant others via texting, Facebook or MySpace.
They won’t go near a retailer that lacks a website.
Altar girls never have been a big deal.
Andy Warhol is a museum in Pittsburgh.
Refugees and prisoners always have been housed by the U.S. government at Guantánamo.
McDonald’s coffee always has been just a little too hot to handle.