Growing up in a new era
Today’s college freshmen have never lived without smartphones, emojis
Students entering college this year have grown up in a world where a phone is used for anything except voice communication.
Instead, a phone is a video game, a direction finder, an electronic telegraph and a research library.
For these students, conversations can be had through emotions, relationships can be found on eHarmony and jobs can be discovered on Monster.com.
These are just some of the facts catalogued on Beloit College’s annual Mindset List for the Class of 2021 that was released Tuesday.
Currently in its 20th year, the Mindset List aims to bridge the gap between generations and acts as a touchstone for teachers to have one-on-one chats and class discussions with students.
“At the most basic level it’s an annual list of what has always or never been true during the 18-year lifetime of entering college students,” said Tom McBride, professor emeritus of English and co-creator of the list. “It’s a terrific way, a conversational starting way to track change over the past 18 years.”
The 60-item list gives a glimpse into the world view of the incoming freshman class and the pop culture that shaped their lives.
This year’s list is the last for the Millennial Generation, a majority of which were born in 1999 and are currently 18 years old.
It details significant events and elements surrounding technology, the economy, politics and culture like the use of legally-binding electronic signatures and the nostalgia for shows like “Dora the Explorer.”
For College of the Canyons (COC) freshmen Mame Kusi and Kim Mekono, the most shocking list item was that, for them, Donald Trump has always been a political figure as a Democrat, an Independent and a Republican.
“The Donald Trump one was surprising,” Kusi said. “If he can be president, we can too.”
Freshman Rebba Valle said the list had a lot of unexpected items on it, some of which she didn’t know beforehand.
“There’s always been emojis for us?” Valle said. “I didn’t know that. A lot of it was surprising.”
Some students did not take an interest to the items on the list and thought it had no influence on them.
“It seems very silly and dumb,” COC student Ryan Nelson said.
But for others, the list brought back memories of things they cherished as children.
For example, this group of students knows Justin Timberlake as a solo act, has spent a lot of their time searching for Pokémon, saw a Blackberry go from a fruit to a phone and back to a fruit, and taught their grandparents how to use programs like Skype.
“My friends definitely taught their grandparents how to use Skype,” COC freshman Kathlynn Allen said. “I watched them do that.”
Co-creator of the list Charles Westerberg, a Brannon-Ballard professor of sociology, noted that this group of students sees themselves as consumers in college because they borrowed money from parents or the government to be there.
“Members of this class have generally borrowed a lot of money to go to college, so expect them to think of themselves as consumers and not just as students,” Westerberg said in a statement. “And they will also be concerned not just with what they need to learn but also who they are and to what group they genuinely belong.”
According to the Mindset List creators, the list is meant to act as a starting point for conversations between generations and between students and teachers, not a complete reflection or a statement of judgment of the class as a whole.
“In truth, the list is not really about 18-year-olds nor is it really about old [people] like us; it’s about how we can come together to talk about interesting cultural phenomena and share our experiences and perspectives,” Westerberg said. “It’s the conversation started by the Mindset List that is the true purpose of doing it every year.”