BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST®

Every year since 2001, the teachers of Beloit College comes out with the Mindset List for the students and their own sanity. It is a way of saying these things don't exist to this class anymore and this thing which didn't exist when you were in school is now commonplace. Here are some of the 70 midsets for the Class of 2011 (for those born in 1990):

1. What Berlin wall?
2. They never “rolled down” a car window.
3. They have grown up with bottled water.
4. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
5. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
6. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
7. Rap music has always been mainstream.
8. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
9. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
10. Music has always been “unplugged.”
11. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
12. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
13. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
14. The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.
15. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
16. Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
17. No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
18. .Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
19. They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”
20. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
21. They grew up in Wayne’s World.
22. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
23. They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
24. Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
25. On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.
26. They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
27. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
28. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
29. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
30. Most phone calls have never been private.
31. Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
32. China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
33. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
34. They’re always texting 1 n other.
35. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities