Consider this: College freshmen who make up the Class of 2018 were in kindergarten when terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center.
Most of them were born in 1996, the same year that Dolly the sheep was cloned. They prefer celebrity “selfies” over autographs, and associate the “press pound” sign on a phone with a Twitter hashtag.
Those are a few of this year’s observations made by two Beloit College academics who created the annual Mindset List, which they have distributed for 16 years. The list has grown so popular that the originators are regularly recruited to speak at national events for groups that included NASA — which wanted to know who will be flying its space missions in 20 years.
At first, the list was to be a joke asking why students had so little knowledge about historical events, said Ron Nief, emeritus director of public affairs for the liberal arts college. He and Tom McBride, humanities professor, quickly realized that the students simply lacked experiences shared by faculty members.
At the time, lists were popular on the Internet. “It became a genre,” Nief quipped.
“You start with the baseline of the year they were born,” said McBride, adding that the two scour the Web, search microfiche and talk to older students, parents, faculty and others. “We get together, figure out what we have found, what factoids stand out and what sort of ways does the culture of the youth generation connect to the adult culture.”
This year, their list of 55 observations and “cultural touchstones” notes that, for the Class of 2018, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” has always been the only news program that really “gets it right.”
“The water cooler is no longer the workplace social center; it’s the place to fill your water bottle,” is another.
The Unabomber has always been behind bars, and “meds have always been an option.”
McBride’s favorite is that the students binge-watch programs like “Breaking Bad” on their smartphones or tablets. He predicts that they will binge-watch college lectures too someday, as a new form of cramming for an exam.
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The duo recently concentrated efforts on the Baby Boom generation with a new book, “The Mindset List of the Obscure: 74 Famously Forgotten Icons from A to Z,” to be released by Amazon on Sept. 2.
To see the entire Class of 2018 Mindset list, go to: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2018/