What Do "Jaws" and College Grads Have in Common?

I remember sitting in a dark theatre in 1975 with my feet tucked underneath me in the seat while I watched a really, super-scary movie about a menacing shark...Jaws!  I remember, also, that it was the same day that my brother was taking his scuba certification test...in Lake Michigan.  It didn't matter that, one, there were no sharks in Lake Michigan that day, and, two, there were no sharks in the theatre, either.  I was still scared.

Worse yet, was the book.  When available, I have always preferred to read the book before seeing the movie.  Generally speaking, the books are better (according to my professional opinion).  Anyway, one day about a year before the movie came out I was strolling through a bookstore looking for a good 'read'.  It was summer and I worked at a job that, periodically, had long moments of total boredom; so, a nice, relaxing book was on my list of things to help me pass the time.

As I walked through the bookstore, I was drawn to the cover of a book that showed a woman swimming with (what I really, honestly thought was...) her pet shark.  I kid you not.  Talk about a really blond moment!  As it turns out, I was (and still am) fascinated with animal behavior.  I thought the book was about a woman who managed to behaviorally change a shark!  Heck, in high school I did a biology experiment on my pet white mice, Ben and Willard, in which I switched their biological time clock around (they were nocturnal creatures and I was going to have none of that when I was trying to sleep!).  So, in all reality, it could have been true.  Right?

Anyway, imagine my surprise as I read the first chapter!  Ouch!  The book had me mesmerized.  And, since the weather was terrible that day, I was able to read the book from 'cover to cover' by the end of my shift!  Wow!  I was, literally, hooked on that shark.

So, now you're probably wondering so what does Jaws have to do with college grads.  I'm glad you asked.  The Beloit College Mindset List.  Since August of 1988, Beloit College has published it's Beloit College Mindset List which provides a look into the "cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college."  (Beloit College Mindset, 2009)   A few years ago, I was at a meeting where the speaker shared some of the ' Class of 2002 List' with us.  One of the items (number 32 on the List) was a reflection of the mindset of that year's List.  It hit home with me because I could totally relate!  The statement reflected that the class of 2002 "never took a swim and thought about Jaws."  WHAT!  That was like the scariest movie I knew of...for the time, which, after using some mental math skills, was 27 years earlier.  I realized that a generation had passed since Spielberg's metal 'fish' kept some of us out of the water.  As well, "Bruce" did not look near as scary when I 'visited' him at the Universal Studios last summer. 

Anyway, each year Beloit College publishes a list for the students entering as Freshmen (so the Fall of 2010 Freshmen class would be the Beloit College Mindset List of 2014).  For this Blog, I thought I would look at the Freshmen class of 2007 (which would be the Mindset List of 2011).  Student's entering College in 2007 were generally born in 1989.   Here's some of what I found (the list contains 70 items!): 

• What Berlin wall?
• Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
• They never "rolled down" a car window.
• They have grown up with bottled water
• General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
• Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South America
• Pete Rose has never played baseball.
• Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
• They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola "MagiCan."
• U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
• They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
• High definition television has always been available.
• Tienanmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
• MTV has never featured music videos.
• They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

And, to further remind us of how quickly things change, the class that entered college this past fall (the Mindset List class of 2014) has an even more interesting list.  For example, "The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and 500 hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm.  Since "digital" has always been in the cultural DNA, they've never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch.  Dirty Harry (who's that?) is to them a great Hollywood director.  The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the united States and China has always posed an economic threat."  (Beloit College Mindset List, 2010)  Here are some additional points to ponder:

• John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
• Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
• Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
• They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
• DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
• Unless they found one in their grandparents' closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
• They've never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
• Czechoslovakia has never existed.
• Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
• Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

So there you have it.  Thus, in thinking about what the mindset of the next generation of workers in our workplace will be bringing with them, it reminds me of how working in a multi-generational environment can be filled with many opportunities for all of us to learn.  As well, for those of us who have had more 'experience', just think of the trivia we could add to the conversation...or, maybe not.

Beloit College Mindset List, http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/, Retrieved 05/05/2011

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