Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the Faculty a sense of the mindset of the incoming freshmen. The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students hardly notice the whether a telephones is in their rooms or not since they have seldom used landlines during their adolescence. Instead they live on their cell phones and communicate via texting.
Roommates, few of whom have ever shared a bedroom, have already checked out each other on Facebook where they have shared their most personal thoughts with the whole world - a multicultural, politically correct and “green” generation that has hardly noticed the threats to their privacy and never feared the Russians and the Warsaw Pact.
Some of the kids who visit our site, Buzzing Kids World, are just a few years away from entering college themselves. With this is mind, students entering college for the first time in Fall of '08 were generally born in 1990. For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead. We thought you'd like to see this partial list of observations regarding the Class of 2012 (the complete list has 60):
1. Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.
2. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
3. Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.
4. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
5. Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.
6. As a precursor to “whatever,” they have recognized that some people “just don’t get it.”
7. Universal Studios has always offered an alternative to Mickey in Orlando.
8. Haagen-Dazs ice cream has always come in quarts.
9. WWW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
10. Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.
11. We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”
12. IBM has never made typewriters.
13. McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.
14. They may have been given a Nintendo Game Boy to play with in the crib.
15. Macaulay Culkin has always been Home Alone.
16. Caller ID has always been available on phones.
17. Windows 3.0 operating system made IBM PCs user-friendly the year they were born.
18. 98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.
Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin puts together a list to try to give the Faculty a sense of the mindset of the incoming freshmen. The class of 2012 has grown up in an era where computers and rapid communication are the norm, and colleges no longer trumpet the fact that residence halls are “wired” and equipped with the latest hardware. These students hardly notice the whether a telephones is in their rooms or not since they have seldom used landlines during their adolescence. Instead they live on their cell phones and communicate via texting. 
