The Beloit College Mindset list for the class of 2014 is an amazing list of cultural touchstones that students seem to accept in their everyday lives. For myself, most of these touchstones are surprisingly familiar. In the following paragraph I will discuss what fits my knowledge and what does not seem to be right to me.
When scanning the list I came across some awkward but true facts that fit me. This includes: few in my class know how to write cursive, email is just to slow, Czechoslovakia has never existed, and they’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day. These are the touchstones that most stand out to me because I remember talking about them in high school. The cultural touchstones that do not make sense to me are: J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone, Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis, and hey have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college. The first two just don't make sense, and I wish I new about the last one. I wonder if that still is some sort of program?
The Beloit College Mindset list is a generalization of our class knowledge. This means not everyone will know what each point on the list means. Most people will have some sort of recognition of items on the cultural touchstone list, but their a few points that people will be totally confused about. For me, I feel like I can relate to most points on the list and that gives me a sense of familiarity.
