Each year Beloit College releases the Beloit College’s Mindset List that reminds an old person like me about ways I can better communicate with college freshmen who tis year are part of the class of 2011. I confess that I know nothing about Beloit College except they publish this list each year. Each year I have found their list entertaining and informative.

Most of the freshmen entering college this fall were born in 1989. Here are a few of my favorites of this list of 70 items that can help in communicating with the class of 2011 (click the above link to see the entire list).

• What Berlin wall?
• Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
• They have grown up with bottled water.
• “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
• They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
• Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
• U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
• Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
• MTV has never featured music videos.
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
• They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.