Beloit Mindset List for Class of 2014
Today's traditional-aged new students were born in 1992. And, as they do every year, Ron Nief, the director of public affairs at Beloit College (WI) and Tom McBride, a professor of the humanities and English at Beloit have created their Mindset List for the Class of 2014.

According to the website (www.beloit.edu/mindset/) the Beloit College Mindset List was "initially a witty way of saying 'watch your references,' and has turned into a globally reported and utilized guide to the intelligent but unprepared adolescent consciousness." The List is requested by thousands of readers, reprinted in hundreds of print and electronic publications, and used for a wide variety of purposes. The name is now licensed to a higher education group in New Zealand that produces its own list each year.

Here is a sampling of the 75 entries for the Class of 2014...

• The Post Office has always been going broke.
  
• Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
  
• E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
  
• The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
  
• Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
  
• Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
  
• Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.
  
• The U.S., Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
  
• Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
  
• Beethoven has always been a dog.
  
• Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
  
• Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
  
• They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
  
• A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority ... unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.
  
• "Caramel macchiato" and "venti half-caf vanilla latte" have always been street corner lingo.

Read the whole fascinating list at www.beloit.edu/mindset.