New Mindset List makes me feel old

 One of my esteemed colleagues shared an interesting bit of information the other day when he alerted me about the newly released Mindset List at Beloit College, a private school in southeastern Wisconsin.

I’d never heard of the list, but it’s been around since 1998, published each fall to give college faculty and the rest of the world a little insight about incoming first-year students.

For this year’s crop of freshmen — most of them born in 1993 — “there has always been an Internet ramp onto the information highway,” the list points out. “Amazon has never been just a river in South America” and “Ferris Bueller and Sloane Peterson could be their parents.”

The list started as a tongue-in-cheek way of telling professors to watch their references when addressing this younger set, but according to the Beloit College website that list has turned into a “globally reported and utilized guide to the intelligent if unprepared adolescent consciousness.”

There’s a lot to chuckle at among the 75 points on this year’s Mindset List, aimed at the college graduating class of 2015.

“Arnold Palmer has always been a drink.”

“Their older siblings have told them about the days when Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were Mouseketeers.”

“Dial-up is soooooooo last century!”

“Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you’re talking about LeBron James.”

“They’ve always wanted to be like Shaq or Kobe: Michael Who?”

An Associated Press story about the new Mindset List advises “older folks” like myself that “if the generation gap has you down, get used to it. The list’s authors note that technology has only accelerated the pace of change and further compressed the generational divide.”

As the mother of two 20-somethings, I already feel ancient enough. I have a Facebook page, but I rarely post anything. I have a cellphone, but not a smartphone. I don’t Tweet. I don’t have an iPad or Kindle. I still read books the old-fashioned way, by turning pages of paper bound together.

I have a couple of my own observations I could add to the list:

“They’ve always gotten ice for their drinks from automatic ice-cube makers.”

A 25-year-old news reporter who stopped by to visit at our home couldn’t figure out how an ice-cube tray works. She’d always had “automatic” ice.

Unbelievable.

Another potential entry for the list would be: “Wouldn’t think of using the Yellow Pages to get information.” I still reach for the phone book to look up local carpet cleaners; my kids Google it. I check the newspaper to see what movies are playing; my kids go online.

If you’re as intrigued with the Mindset List as I was, I should point out that the list’s authors, Beloit College’s emeritus public affairs director Ron Nief and English and Keefer professor of the humanities Tom McBride, have applied their list format to 10 generations of Americans over 150 years in their new book, “The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal.”

I hope I can still get a hard copy of the book; I’m old school that way.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.