Beloit College Mindset List

The Beloit College has written up  a list of random facts/opinions believed to be true about the class of 2014. Many of these stand to be true, but there are also many false statements in the list. In fact, many of the statements on the list, are things that we have learned about the past years of schooling. Most of the stuff is simply forgotten because we view it as outdated, useless information in a soceity that is developing faster and faster.

The first thing that I find untrue deals with the statement that few in our class know how to write cursive. I disagree with this idea, because from elementary school to the entering of middle school, most schools required us to ONLY write in cursive so that it stuck in our heads for when we needed it "Later in life". We usually started learning the letters in second grade or so, and from that year on, most assignments dealing with writing were supposed to be written in a cursive format. I will say that as we grew older, most of the classes throughout high school, did not require a certain writing format. This is not to say that most of us have forgotten how to do it; having year after year of repititious practice more than likely drilled it into the backs of our heads.

I would agree with the statment that says we seldom if ever use e-mail (snail mail) in some instances. It is much easier now days to simply text someone information, or use social networks to obtain or send out mail to friends, family, and others. Many of us have multiple e-mail accounts whether it is through Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo, Gmail, or any other type of service. The only problem is that we rarely use all these accounts, let alone even one. On the contrary, e-mail is still a vital tool for keeping in contact with people such as professors, family members, and many other people. Having a designated spot to receive important information about due dates of assignments and other events is vital for us.

The statement, computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive, can be applied in some sense to our generation, but we were still computer literate during the time in which we had Apple computers with a floppy drive. I remember playing Oregon Trail on the computers with the monitors that projected two main colors, green and black. It was a tradition at my elementary school to wake up as early as possible, get to school when the doors opened, and try to beat Oregon Trail before the bell would ring for the start of classes every day. Many people may never have even had the chance to use these computers, but it was one of the best memories I have from my days of roaming the halls as a big sixth grader.

Regardless of our age and the advances of technology, I think that even though our generation is growing up in such a tech-savvy world, we still have the opportunity to learn about some of the important events that were before us. Sure, we have IPods, Xbox, and Droids, but that doesn't mean we haven't lost touch with our past. Whether it be something as little as a simple task learned in second grade or a famous person from the 70's, we still can learn about it at any time. The technology we have today helps us research the past in ways that would never would have been thought possible twenty years ago. I am proud of what we've become.