Ready to Feel Old?

Beloit College marks the start of new academic years by releasing its annual "mindset list" -- helping academics understand what their newest students didn't experience (except maybe from reading on Wikipedia) that may have shaped their professors. Some highlights of the new list, released today:

For the entering class, most born in 1994:

• Kurt Cobain, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Nixon and John Wayne Gacy have always been dead.
• They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of “electronic narcotics.”
• If they miss "The Daily Show," they can always get their news on YouTube.
• Robert De Niro is thought of as Greg Focker's long-suffering father-in-law, not as Vito Corleone or Jimmy Conway.
• Bill Clinton is a senior statesman about whose presidency they have little knowledge.
• They have never seen an airplane “ticket.”
• For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.
• Their folks have never gazed with pride on a new set of bound encyclopedias on the bookshelf.

The full list, plus previous year's lists, may be found here.