My youngest daughter started college this week. We got a call from her last night, and she gave us the full rundown of her classes: the ones that look fun (Latin American History), the ones that look boring (French). She was excited to sneak into a needed biology lab, even though her credit hours are creeping up.
It was neat to talk with her about it all, to hear the excitement in her voice underneath the thin veneer of pragmatism. And what made it neater is that, well, we could hear it. She called, after all … she didn’t text, didn’t send us an e-mail, didn’t let us know through a Facebook post (which would be hard anyway, since she recently quit the site). It was a momentous enough day to where she thought a call was in order. And that was kinda cool.
College kids like Emily don’t typically call folks—even their folks—much anymore. They don’t do a lot of things that we used to do.
The day my daughter called us, Beloit College in Beloit, Wis., released its annual “Mindset List” for the incoming freshmen class—a list that seems designed primarily to make their parents feel very, very old.
Consider No. 20 on the list: “Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected quietly by well-meaning friends.” or No. 60: “History has always had its own channel.” Many have never seen an actual airline ticket (No. 9), consider “American royalty” to be the Jackson family, not the Kennedys (No. 4), and have lived in a world in which professional football has always been played in Jacksonville, Fla., but never Los Angeles (No. 14).
The list isn’t meant to denigrate incoming college freshmen and the world in which they’ve grown up, but some things on the list can make you suck in a sharp breath. We can see just how far biblical literacy has dropped by reading Beloit’s No. 3: “The Biblical sources of terms such as ‘forbidden fruit,’ ‘the writing on the wall,’ ‘good Samaritan,’ and ‘the promised land’ are unknown to most of them.” And No. 2 tells us that “They have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of ‘electronic narcotics.’”
In a front-page article outlining Beloit’s list, USA Today takes a surprisingly somber look [] at the new generation, talking with Arthur Levine, one of the authors of Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today’s College Student. “This is a generation with an average of 241 social media friends, but they have trouble communicating in person,” Levine says. And while today’s freshmen stand head and shoulders above their parents in terms of techno-savvy, Levine believes they’re not as prepared to deal with life’s messy realities. Indeed, according to USA Today, Levine and co-author Diane Dean “characterize them as coddled, entitled and dependant.”
I don’t see a lot of those negative characteristics in my daughter … but then again, I probably wouldn’t. I, like lots of dads, think my little girl is pretty awesome. But it’s also sobering to think that she—like most college freshmen—doesn’t really have a good recollection of what a “normal” world (at least one that I’d consider normal) looks like.
My daughter was 5 when the World Trade Center was toppled on 9/11. I remember her playing out in the back yard while the rest of us were glued to the television, watching the news that horrible day. Since then, the United States has always been enmeshed in foreign conflicts. The economy’s often been sour. She grew up in an uncertain, pessimistic age, and now she’s got to make her way in a world that, to me, seems to wobble on its axis a little.
As Christians, we know that our lives and our world are ultimately in God’s hands. We know that He is sovereign, and that gives us a measure of peace. Whatever happens, we know God is ultimately in control. But when I think about my daughter and the world we’re leaving her, I hurt a little. I wish things were a bit better out there for her.
Then again, I’m pretty confident in her ability to deal with whatever comes her way. While I long to protect her—to “coddle” her, as Levine and Dean might say—she’s a pretty strong, resourceful young adult. And when all’s said and done, I think she and these other college freshmen might do us all proud.
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