Lu, Siye: Beloit List

        In the 21^st Century, many things and thoughts have changed. The Mindset List was created at Beloit College in 1998 to reflect the worldview of entering first-year students. It started with the members of the class of 2002, born in 1980. It clearly shows the dissimilarities between the different years of freshmen.

         

As far as I can see from The 2011 Mind-Set of Faculty (Born Before 1980), what they mentioned are really the old things. For example, they never used libraries as restaurants or coffee shops. They faced real books; they did not “Facebook.” They remember the world without Starbucks, which now has become a part of daily life, almost. They grew up during a time when "like" represented the beginning of a simile, rather than a piece of verbal confetti. They lived more simply because they did not have advanced technologies then. They still had to dial a telephone when they wanted to connect someone else, even if they were facing an emergency.  On the other hand, faculty members born before 1970 are usually willing to help students learn how to pretend to give a damn about their education and are involved in less absentee teaching and learning than their younger colleagues. The goal of the education is still the same. The instructors nowadays still pay a lot of attention to attendance. But now, the relationship between the professors and students is more equal and they are more like friends. They may “Add Friend” a student on Facebook or MySpace, sharing what happened around them whenever and wherever.

            

The Beloit College Mind-Set List Welcomes the 'Internet Class' explains a lot of facts. There is no doubt that life has always been like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get next. This eternal verity shows that some moral and ethical principles do not change. What has changed is the pattern. But the generation gap is still there. Today's students may have no idea about dial phones. To them, Amazon may not only mean the river in South America, but also the most visited online shopping center which almost contains everything they need in daily life. They seldom buy music CDs, instead, they prefer to download their favorite songs from the Internet, then transfer them into their MP3 or iPods. Thanks to the Internet, they always feel close to their friends because of the Facebook and MSN. The Internet is so powerful in modern society and has become more and more useful so that people almost cannot live without it. Now, they can read the news from all over the world and share the ideas with others worldwide. Their schools' "Blackboards" have always been getting smarter. They are the first generation to grow up hearing about the dangerous overuse of antibiotics. They cook by watching the Food Channel. Students nowadays bring laptops to the class instead of notebooks. Everything has been changed since 1980. The lifestyle nowadays must be almost unimaginable and unbelievable to those people who were born before 1980.

          

 However, these changes are the temporary. Just as people now do not use dial phones any longer and use cell phones instead, no one can predict technological breakthroughs. Smartphones will replace the normal cell phones one day. Beyond that, who knows? Technology is always developing and thus people’s life style is changing. In my opinion, what people can do is to adjust to these developments as soon as possible, or drop behind.