mindset list

Beloit College puts out this list every year for the professors to have a sense of their students. I love reading lists. I love making them too. I also loving adding my two cents to things, so while reading this I added a couple comments. 

Students entering college for the first time this fall were generally born in 1990.
For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

• Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team. (No, actually. Harry's birthday was July 31, 1980. He could have graduated high school with me. Yeah...I'm that freak!) 
• Since they were in diapers, karaoke machines have been annoying people at parties. (And people all over the world have been living out there being-Chaka-Khan fantasies!)
• They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego. (That was the best video game ever (that they let us play at school!). Close second: Oregon Trail. What the hell...did you ever notice that you always either starved or died of dysentary!?
• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available. (If that GPS would have been around when we were kids ET would have had an easier time getting home! 
• Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.
• Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle. (Life changing!)
• Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
• Their parents may have dropped them in shock when they heard George Bush announce “tax revenue increases.”
• Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.
• Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
• All have had a relative--or known about a friend's relative--who died comfortably at home with Hospice.
• As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”
• Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando.
• Grandma has always had wheels on her walker. (What the hell does this mean? Like the walkers where there are two wheels and then two tennis balls...why do people do that? Do tennis balls slow you down when going downhill?)
• Martha Stewart Living has always been setting the style. (Only if it also comes in "prison jumpsuit orange.")
• Haagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.
• Club Med resorts have always been places to take the whole family.
• WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
• Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents. 
• Students have always been "Rocking the Vote.”
• Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.
• Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.
• We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
• There have always been gay rabbis. (Really?)
• Wayne Newton has never had a mustache. (THANK GOD! Looks creepy enough as is...nevermind adding a "Chester, Chester.")
• College grads have always been able to Teach for America.
• IBM has never made typewriters.
• Roseanne Barr has never been invited to sing the National Anthem again. (Once again...THANK GOD!)
• McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries. (As opposed to the old way of using lard?)
• They have never been able to color a tree using a raw umber Crayola.
• There has always been Pearl Jam.
• The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST. 
• Pee-Wee has never been in his playhouse during the day. (Nope just in a public bathroom somewhere going "That's the magic word of the day!" PERVERT!)
• They never tasted Benefit Cereal with psyllium.
• They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib. 
• Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.
• Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.
• Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.
• Balsamic vinegar has always been available in the U.S. (Really this is the generation-gap clincher. I don't care that these kids know nothing about history or politics or old pop culture icons. What blows me away is that this generation has always had balsalmic vinegar at their f*&^ing fingertips...and probably never really appreciated that fact!)
• Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone. (And he still looks exactly as he did when he was 10).
• Their parents may have watched The American Gladiators on TV the day they were born. (And fantasized about people whose names where Lightning and Thunder!)
• Personal privacy has always been threatened.
• Caller ID has always been available on phones.
• Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.
• The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
• They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”
• Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.
• Soft drink refills have always been free.
• They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.” 
• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs. (Eh? Muscovites? Really?)
• The Royal New Zealand Navy has never been permitted a daily ration of rum. (World altering news here!)
• The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.
• 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.
• Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate cancer research.
• Off-shore oil drilling in the United States has always been prohibited.
• Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.
• There have always been charter schools.
• Students always had Goosebumps.