Mindset List for the Baby Boomers

Every fall Beloit College issues its Mindset List for the incoming college class and every year I find myself more and more surprised. My cultural references have become obsolete. Where did the time go? It made me wonder if the incoming class would find the mindset of my college class as alien as I find theirs. I thought I’d give it a try, so here are some of the realities of life for my incoming college class.

• If you wanted your own phone, you had to order it from the phone company. Each dorm had a phone in the lobby; if you got a call the person at the desk would call you on the intercom so you could pick up the extension in the hall.

  Rotary Phone. Image from Sparkfun.com

• The lucky few owned typewriters. The really lucky ones owned electric typewriters. The rest of us borrowed.
• Microwaves were too big and expensive to bring to college.
• We drank Tab and Fresca. No Diet Coke yet.

  Image from http://americansoda.co.uk.

• Students went to Florida and other warm spots for spring break but not to Disney World because it hadn’t been built.
• We found articles by looking in books, thick indexes that covered a few months to a year per volume
• The library catalog was still a card catalog.

  Traditional card catalog. Image from Wikimedia Commons

• We didn’t have cable television.
• We called the movie, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Star Wars.

I looked up what things cost then:

• Gallon of gas                      $ .65
• New car (average)           $ 4300
• Loaf of bread                     $ .32
• Average income               $10,360.

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