I ran across a link to Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2010. I’ve seen these before, as they’re frequently forwarded around. This one is a bit bizarre. Some of them make me feel old:

• Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
• Caller ID has always been available on phones.
• GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.

Some of them are true of me (class of 2003):

• They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.
• Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia. (I am of course aware of Leningrad, but I don’t think I learned geography with it. Presumably it’s the same for the class of 12.)
  Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.

And some of them don’t make very much sense:

• The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents. (I don’t know what this one is supposed to mean - our parents were unfamiliar with the League of Nations? That seems unlikely. But I do feel more familiar with the LN than with the Warsaw Pact, so maybe this one is true of me and that’s why I don’t get it!)
• Michael Milken has always been a philanthropist promoting prostate cancer research. (Who TF is Michael Milken?
• As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.” (Is the latter supposed to be some sort of cultural catchphrase?)

So then I looked up the ones for the class of 2003 and some of them were great because they’re now outdated:

• They were born and grew up with Microsoft, IBM PCs, in-line skates, NutraSweet, fax machines, film on disks, and unregulated quantities of commercial interruptions on television.
• The moonwalk is a Michael Jackson dance step, not a Neil Armstrong giant step. (I’m going to guess that for the class of 2010, it’s the latter.)

Then some again seem wrong:

• Yugoslavia has never existed. (I had to look this up to be sure, but it existed until 2003! Or maybe they’re talking about the one that disintegrated in 1992, but still, I was definitely familiar with there having been such a country.)
• Ketchup has always been a vegetable.

And some don’t apply - apparently I was really not with the times, because I don’t (and never did) know the names of at least half the members of the “Brat Pack”, who Tina Yothers or Max Headroom is, which dolls had “Xavier Roberts” on their ear, what Willis was “talkin’ ’bout”, or what a Doozer is.

It’s true, though, that I have no idea why “Solidarity” is spelled with a capital “S”! (Wikipedia actually didn’t shed a whole lot of light on this one; I now know about a whole bunch of different leftist and socialist organizations called that, but it isn’t obvious what the list writers were referring to.)

Posted by Amanda in General |