Each fall, Beloit College in Wisconsin issues its Mindset List, used to describe the incoming class of freshmen, and help others relate to their life experiences. After teaching for 30 years, I find each list more terrifying.

Especially when I compare it to my own college freshman mindset.

Pearl Harbor and World War II both occurred before I was born, so as a 20-year-old student, they were not a part of real life. World War I and the Civil War were out of history books.

For today’s 20-year-old student, comparable events are, in order, the Challenger explosion (didn’t that just happen?), Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus, and the first flight of the Wright brothers.

Seriously, the first flight is as far back to today’s student as the Civil War is to me.

It’s often a moment of shock to me when students don’t get a reference, especially when it’s something I think of as current, like a Seinfeld quotation. They used to say, “My mom liked that”. Now they are saying, “My grandma liked that.”

            Freshmen today were not even born when the X-Files premiered.

The X-Files.

When looking at the Beloit list, I’ve often thought the saddest will be the year, soon coming, when no college freshman lived in a time that did not include 9-11. Terror-alert chart and Homeland Security will always have been a part of their world.

A math professor once explained to me this is all a matter of ratio. People who are 50 find a year goes by quickly, but not so for a child who’s 5. That’s because a year is 2% of the adult’s life but 20% of the child’s. I guess that’s also why, when I think of the past 30 years of my life, it seems like many lifetimes – being a young(ish) woman, working in different careers, getting an education, preparing for retirement. But when I think about the next 30, should I be blessed to live so long, it seems like a blink of the eye.

Today I look back and think I should have enjoyed my health more when in my 40s and 50s. When I’m 80, will I think of 65-year-old Julie as being a kid?