Incoming college freshman again remind the rest of us how old we really are.
Beloit College's annual "Mindset List," which was initially started in 1998 as a way to remind faculty of potentially dated references, now reveals tidbits about the Class of 2017's worldview.
For example these kids, born mostly in 1995, love to share information online and tend to post and tweet personal information without hesitation. They think it's rude to call someone unannounced and assume it's best to arrange a time to talk through text of Facebook.
In their minds, it's never been legal to sell spray pain in Chicago, because the city banned it before their time. To them, Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead.
"When the Class of 2017 arrives on campus this fall, these digital natives will already be well-connected to each other," the list notes. "They are more likely to have borrowed money for college than their Boomer parents were, and while their parents foresee four years of school, the students are pretty sure it will be longer than that."
Other interesting insights into the freshman mind, according to the list, "Gaga has never been baby talk," "they have known only two presidents" and "a tablet is no longer something you take in the morning."
Oh and Eminem and LL Cool J are old enough to show up at parents’ weekend.
The list is receiving some criticism this year, though.
Anonymous writers on a newly created blog called Beloit Mindlessness claim the list "is a poorly written compendium of trivia, stereotypes and lazy generalizations, insulting to both students and their professors, and based on nothing more than the uninformed speculation of its authors. It inspires lazy, inaccurate journalism and is an embarrassment to academia."
