3rd Annual Mindset List® PARENTS’ ADVISORY

As the calendar flips to 2014, announcements will fill the media of the first child born in the New Year. Parents, veteran and new, 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,  offer their yearly advisory on the questions these parents should be prepared for.

Here is their  counsel:  “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 fast things are going to change.”

As a guide to the inquiries these infants may pose over the next 18 years about the “olden days,” here are 18 distinct possibilities.

Start taking notes!

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

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

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

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

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?

Why do they call the digital fund transfer app on my pocket computer a “checkbook”?

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?

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

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

Have you seen my 3-D pen? I seem to have misplaced it. 

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?

On which website did you meet Dad?

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

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

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

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

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

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. Is that covered on our insurance? 

P.S. IF YOU CAN THINK OF OTHER QUESTIONS NEW PARENTS SHOULD BE READY FOR OVER THE NEXT 18 YEARS, DROP US A LINE AT mcbridet@beloit.edu or at our Facebook Page. WE CAN ALWAYS USE THEM NEXT YEAR! Thanks!