The Mindset List

At the start of every school year, these two guys at Beloit College put out this list that they call the Mindset List. They put this out every year, as you can hear about in that nice conference they give under that link. I had no idea what the Mindset List was until the year before I went off to college. That year, my dad shoved under my nose the Chicago Trib and said "READ THIS!" in his excited manner he gets when he is REALLY EXCITED about something. I read it and felt sort of silly, as half the things on that list I had no clue what they meant.

But that is the point of the mindset list. It is the mindset of the incoming freshman class of that year.

When I got the email about this years mindset list and read it, it made me feel old. I shouldn't feel that old, as I not that old, but it did make me feel a little dated.

However, that is truely not the point of this post. The point of this post is Tom McBride, one of the guys who put together the list. I went to Beloit for four years and had Tom McBride as a professor. Beloit is the type of school where you call the professors all by their first names. You have Georgia, Warren, Nancy, Bob, Tod, Emily, Sophie and on and on. However, Tom McBride was almost referred to as Tom McBride when you were not speaking to him. For awhile, I referred to him as Tommcbride. All one word as that was how I said it. I do not really understand why we always called him Tom McBride, but he was a full name professor. The only other professor that seeminly broke the first name rule was Krider, but that was only because he was Krider. You would never call him Emiel to his face. It just felt...wrong.

Anyways, so this Mindset List came out and I found myself face to face with Tom McBride again. Tom McBride is the flagship professor for Beloit. I am not sure how he managed to become the flagship professor of Beloit, but he is. Talking just like he has always talked, saying pretty much the same thing he always says.