Freshmen Class

As thousands of freshmen students step foot on college campuses for the first time all around the country, we have a heart to meet and interact with these students early in the fall. Since my younger sister was born in 1986, that has always been the mark of "young" in my eyes.

I recently read through The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014, citing what is true of these incoming freshmen, WHO WERE BORN IN 1992! A few things on the list that stuck out to me that I'm sure are mostly true include:

- Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

- Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. (although that is true of us all)

- "Caramel macchiato" and "venti half-caf vanilla latte" have always been street corner lingo.

- Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

- They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

- DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

- Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

- They've never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

- Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.

- "Viewer Discretion" has always been an available warning on TV shows.

- The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.

- American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

- Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

- Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

- Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

- Beethoven has always been a dog.

- Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.