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Do You Feel Old, CNN Article

Undertow

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Email is too slow and wristwatches are pointless for college freshmen

Printed below for your convenience:

"(CNN) -- For most college freshmen starting school this fall, email is passe and wearing a watch on your wrist is, well, unnecessary, according to the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014, most of whom were born in 1992.

The list was first created by the Wisconsin school in 1998 to remind professors what cultural factors have gone into shaping the lives of their students.

While email was revolutionary for their parents, today's college freshmen find it terribly slow, instead choosing to use their opposable thumbs to send dozens of text messages a day on their smartphones, which they use for telling time rather than strapping on a watch and surfing the web.

Home computers have always been a part of their lives, although the ones they first played on in preschool are now in museums. The PCs and Apples of the early 1990s had hard drives with smaller capacities than today's flash drives, used monochromatic monitors and were not connected to the internet.

Check out the Beloit College Mindset List

And technology is not the only thing that has changed, either.

In the world of entertainment, Snoop Doggy Dogg is just Snoop Dogg. Ice-T is an actor who plays a New York police detective on "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," instead of a rapper stirring controversy with his song "Cop Killer."

And Clint Eastwood is a sensitive Oscar-winning director, not a tough-as-nails detective known as Dirty Harry.

The Class of 2014 now has hundreds of channels to watch with nothing on, while their parents had at most a few dozen when they were growing up. Nirvana is now classic rock. And their parents' favorite TV shows have always been showing up as movies -- "The Brady Bunch," "The A-Team" and "The Addams Family."

Beethoven has always been a big drooling dog, not a classical composer. Fergie is a pop singer, not a former English princess. Barney is a purple dinosaur, not a deputy sheriff in Mayberry.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been on the Supreme Court since today's freshmen started crawling. Bill Clinton was elected president the year most of them were born.

The Iron Curtain is something they know about from history books and Czechoslovakia has never existed during their lifetimes.

In the world of sports, Bud Selig has always been the commissioner of Major League Baseball. Tiger Woods has been golfing professionally since they were 4, and Michael Jordan is better known for his underwear commercials than he is for playing basketball.

And finally to the medicine cabinet, where the Class of 2014 can find toothpaste tubes that stand on end and Band-Aids that have always come in multiple colors.

"The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older," the college said in announcing this year's list."
 

Richard Warren

Practically Family
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682
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Bay City
Don't take this wrong, really nothing personal, but makes you wonder who is dumber: CNN or the folks at Beloit College.

By the way, give a college student a good watch, and she will wear it.
 

Foofoogal

Banned
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Location
Vintage Land
I saw that and can understand it. Some things make me feel old but some things make me completely stunned they have not improved on.
My 2 biggest stunners are sheetrock and C Section rates.
Archaic as 1950 or so IMHO.

Selling online since 2002 I can promise one thing. It changes constantly. To sell I have to change constantly. The biggest factor is I was so naive when I started that I just thought I had to know my antiques and do what I do.

Recently I saw a prototype on a show of a car that would then turn into a boat and then go back on land and then become a plane and fly. Very Jetsons. I always think we should be there though there have been many strides I am disappointed there are not more.
Where are the Einsteins or the Jonas Salks?

From me who is looking very hard at the Droid currently. To me that is progress a bit anyway.
 

Mr_D.

A-List Customer
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320
Location
North Ga.
Well, now I really feel old. :(

I am only 31 but when I think back to things like whats in that list, it makes me wonder where it all went.
 

Argee

One of the Regulars
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116
Location
New Orleans, LA
on their smartphones, which they use for telling time rather than strapping on a watch

With all their emphasis on speed and convenience, pulling out your phone to check the time is so much slower than looking at your wrist. The band on my watch gave way the other day and it was painful to have to pull out my cellphone to check the time. I kept looking at my bare wrist. I was so relieved to get it back on my wrist. Funny thing is, if I was carrying a pocket watch I wouldn't have a problem with reaching into my pocket to check the time.
 

Shangas

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,116
Location
Melbourne, Australia
I'm only 23. I feel damn old now.

I can still remember how new email was...and laser printers...and USB sticks...and how laptops the size of briefcases were considered 'compact'.
 

Yeps

Call Me a Cab
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2,456
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Philly
Richard Warren said:
By the way, give a college student a good watch, and she will wear it.

I am not sure I have seen a wristwatch on campus. There are two of us who carry pocketwatches, but we are weird.
 

Shangas

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,116
Location
Melbourne, Australia
I started carrying a pocket-watch when I was doing my bachelor's. And I never stopped.

But yeah, wristwatches don't seem to be as common anymore. And if they are, they're usually the cheap, throwaway kind.
 

Tango Yankee

Call Me a Cab
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Lucasville, OH
I felt old 10 years ago when an airman that worked for me thought that Viet Nam happened way back in the '40s. :eusa_doh:

She immediately got a history lesson. lol

But what really makes me feel old right now is that my godson will be a part of that class graduating from university in 2014! :p

Cheers,
Tom
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
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Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Undertow said:
The Class of 2014 now has hundreds of channels to watch with nothing on, while their parents had at most a few dozen when they were growing up.

"A few dozen?" Where did their parents grow up??

Try *four* channels -- and then only when you held the rabbit ears in one hand and a strip of aluminum foil in the other.
 

Mav

A-List Customer
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California
LizzieMaine said:
"A few dozen?" Where did their parents grow up??

Try *four* channels -- and then only when you held the rabbit ears in one hand and a strip of aluminum foil in the other.

The class of '14s parents probably spent their formative years in the '80's.

Yeah, I know. Makes me feel old, too.
 

Tango Yankee

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Lucasville, OH
Mav said:
The class of '14s parents probably spent their formative years in the '80's.

Yeah, I know. Makes me feel old, too.


Good point. My godson's parents and I spent our formative years in the '70s, but their sons weren't born until the '90s due to things like university, medical school, etcetera coming first. I forget that not everyone waits until they're in their 30s to have kids! :p

Cheers,
Tom
 

Foofoogal

Banned
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Location
Vintage Land
"A few dozen?" Where did their parents grow up??

Try *four* channels -- and then only when you held the rabbit ears in one hand and a strip of aluminum foil in the other.
__________________

lol lol You forgot the beating on the side of the tv every once in awhile or someone going outside to turn the antenna while hollering back inside. lol

I promise my Dad came home once with a doohickey that was put on the black and white screen to make it color tv. It had green at bottom and blue at top. I don't remember the middle stripe. :eusa_clap

We just had our precious first grandson. I so wonder what the world will be like in his day.
 

LordBest

Practically Family
Messages
692
Location
Australia
I'm 25 and I feel positively geriatric now. I don't even know how to send a text.

Oh, and Fergie was a Duchess, not a princess, though she did have princess in her full title because she was married to a Royal Prince, not a Duke.
 

Mav

A-List Customer
Messages
413
Location
California
Derek WC said:
Don't worry, I'm 15 and I don't even know how to send a text. lol
Thank G-d, there may be hope yet.

To Argee's point on speed, unbeknownst to most of my co- workers and guys I do business with, it is actually faster to check a wristwatch for the time, look up a written down phone number and call it, write down dates and look them up on a paper calender, and call instead of text. Modern technology wastes time and annoys people. Especially me.

I'll return to my cave now.
 

Shangas

I'll Lock Up
Messages
6,116
Location
Melbourne, Australia
Mav said:
Thank G-d, there may be hope yet.

To Argee's point on speed, unbeknownst to most of my co- workers and guys I do business with, it is actually faster to check a wristwatch for the time, look up a written down phone number and call it, write down dates and look them up on a paper calender, and call instead of text. Modern technology wastes time and annoys people. Especially me.

I'll return to my cave now.

You remind me of a story a friend of mine told me several years ago. They got a teenage boy and this sixty-or-seventy-something year-old radio-operator and they did a speed-test.

They gave the teen a cellphone and the gave the old man a telegraph-machine and gave them a passage of text to transmit. Then they would give them another. And another. And another.

According to the story, the old man with the morse key won out every time against the kid with the cellphone who was texting at the speed of light.
 

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