The Mindset List of American History, Book by Ron Nief & Tom McBride; Photo courtesy of www.beloit.edu

As the calendar flips to 2014, announcements will fill the media of the first child born in the New Year. These new parents will start preparing for the future, imagining what it will be like when these precious bundles grow up, graduate from high school, and head off to college around 2032.

Ron Nief and Tom McBride, authors of the annual Beloit College Mindset List, here offer their yearly advisory on the questions that these parents should be prepared for. “At some point you are going to have to explain yourself and your generation to the inquiring minds of your children, so it is best to recognize now how rapidly things change,” they suggest.

Below are 18 revealing questions or requests that these new parents may one day have to answer:

1. What were you carrying around in those big backpacks when you were in school?


2. Why did you go to only ONE college and why did you go for FOUR years?


3. When you did your grocery shopping online, how many hours did it take for delivery?


4. What sorts of programs were offered on television when it was free?


5. My college gave me a full scholarship plus they are paying me $40,000 a year to play basketball for them.  I don’t understand why you played for nothing when you were in college. Didn’t the NCAA Semi Professional College Athletic Union negotiate contracts for you?


6. Why do they call the digital fund transfer app on my pocket computer a "checkbook"?


7. When you were a kid and the lights did not go on automatically when you came into a room, how did you find the little switch in the dark?


8. Isn‘t it great that I can stay on your health insurance until I am 30?



9. Beloit College; Photo courtesy of www.beloit.edu

   How did you ever figure out that computer keyboard with the letters in such strange order? Keyboarding must have taken a lot of time.


10. Have you seen my 3-D pen? I’ve misplaced it.


11. Do you think that your having worked down at the Microsoft campus for the past 25 years will help me to get a job there when I graduate?


12. On which website did you meet mom?


13. Why is that old guy Edward Snowden living on a boat in the middle of the ocean?


14. Why do Senate Third Party Leader Ted Cruz and his followers keep reading Green Eggs and Ham every year?


15. How long have they been trying to figure out what Iran’s nuclear reactors are really for?


16. How did you remember what all those keys and passwords were for before the introduction of thought identification software?


17. Since we now have Tasmanian Tigers and miniature Mastodons down at Biogene Park, do you think we will see real dinosaurs as pets someday?


18. Now that I have broken up with the first great love of my life, I think I need neurocosmetic surgery to get rid of all the painful memories.

You can find more on the mindset lists at the Mindset List site. (www.themindsetlist.com)

Ron Nief & Tom McBride; Photo courtesy of www.beloit.edu

Ron Nief is emeritus director of public affairs at Beloit College, stepping down in 2009 after 14 years at the college. He has been communicating the work of higher education for more than four decades, starting with his alma mater, Boston College in the 1960s and including Brandeis and Clark universities, and Middlebury College. He has written for numerous publications including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor. The recipient of a Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America, he also received a Distinguished Service Award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He created the Mindset List in 1998.

Tom McBride is a professor of English and Keefer Professor of the Humanities at Beloit College. A graduate of Baylor University and the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign, he teaches Milton, Shakespeare, and critical theory and has team-taught many interdisciplinary courses. He was a co-founder of the program in Rhetoric and Discourse in the English department and for many years headed the college’s First-Year Initiatives seminar program. He has published critical essays and creative non-fiction in journals as diverse as Texas Studies in Language and Literature, The Baker Street Journal, and Two Cities, and on britannica.com and open democracy.net. He has been a commentator on language for Wisconsin Public Radio and is known on campus for the twice-yearly Keefer Lectures.

Tags: Mindset List, Beloit College, Wisconsin, Ron Nief, Tom McBride