The Class of 2017

Every year Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin publishes what it calls "The Mindset List"--fun facts and figures about the incoming crop of freshmen so professors will be able to relate to their new students. Beloit says the list is a reminder that the world view of today's new college students is significantly different from the intellectual framework of those students who entered only a few years earlier. Put another way, it's a reminder that you are getting on in years.

A sampling from the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2017:

• Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead.
• Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents' weekend.
• They are the sharing generation, having shown tendencies to share everything, including possessions, no matter how personal.
• GM means food that is Genetically Modified.
• As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen.
• "Dude" has never had a negative tone.
• As kids they may well have seen "Chicken Run" but probably never got chicken pox.
• Having a chat has seldom involved talking.
• Gaga has never been baby talk.
• They could always get rid of their outdated toys on eBay.
• They have known only two presidents.
• Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents' screens grow ever larger.
• PayPal has replaced a pen pal as a best friend on line.
• Rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Skype accounts than with getting a driver's license and car.
• A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning.
• With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address.
• Java has never been just a cup of coffee.
• They have never attended a concert in a smoke-filled arena.
• They have never really needed to go to their friend's house so they could study together.
• Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe.