About those mindsets

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned wanting to do a post about the Benoit Mindset List. So here it is.
The list, as you may recall, is one that a couple of college professors post every year to remind professors of the perceptions their incoming students have: The things they’ve never experienced, the things they think are normal. Clint Eastwood is best known as a celebrated director; HIV-positive athletes have been around as long as the students have been around; Fergie is a pop-singer, not a British princess; ADA access is nothing unusual.
As I noted in the previous post, I take some of the entries with a grain of salt (what is the documentation for the statement that kids don’t know how to write cursive?); one or two items I actually identify with. Being old enough to grow up with My Three Sons, for instance, I was flabbergasted when I saw how many sleazebags Fred MacMurray (the all-wise, unflappable father figure of the show, for those who don’t know) had previously played in the movies (Double Indemnity, The Apartment, The Caine Mutiny and the execrable Hands Across the Table, for instance).
As far as writing for this audience, or about characters this age, I find myself wondering how much use it is. Certainly if I was writing Y/As, the reminders about dated cultural references would be handy.
For writing about 18 year olds? Unless I was doing a story digging way into the past (“What was the Soviet Union and why would they have you here as a sleeper?”), I’m not sure how much help it is: After all, a lot of this world is my world too. Even though I don’t take them for granted, I’m used to cellphones, e-mail, the absence of the Soviet Union.
And probably just getting into the mindset of someone who’s 18 would be more of a challenge than the technical points (not an impossible one, but certainly work): Feeling young, knowing what you’re going to do with your life, having no idea, different perceptions of drugs, drinking, sex, etc. (not just from me at my age, but me when I was 18–that was back when 18 year old drinking was legal, after all).
So I guess I think of it more as an interested read than a valuable writing tool, though again, that may be because I don’t do much in that age range—thinking about this kind of list for someone in the fifties or sixties produces much more insights I can use. In fact, I may try it for a couple of historical fantasies that seem to be just sitting there.
I’ll let you know if I do. And how it goes.