Product Description A revealing look at the college freshman experience, from an insider?s point of view
After fifteen years of teaching anthropology at a large university, Rebekah Nathan had become baffled by her own students. Their strange behavior?eating meals at their desks, not completing reading assignments, remaining silent through class discussions?made her feel as if she were dealing with a completely foreign culture. So Nathan decided to do what anthropologists do when confused by a different culture: Go live with them. She enrolled as a freshman, moved into the dorm, ate in the dining hall, and took a full load of courses. And she came to understand that being a student is a pretty difficult job, too. Her discoveries about contemporary undergraduate culture are surprising and her observations are invaluable, making My Freshman Year essential reading for students, parents, faculty, and anyone interested in educational policy.
A must-read for college professors! September 30, 2008 Faculty at my campus are reading this for a monthly discussion group. It is very enlightening and helps us understand our current college students. School is soooo much different now! If you want to engage students more, read the book. Good info for those working on campuses with lots of international students.
Incredibly informative July 2, 2008 0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is inceribly informative - if you've never met, been, heard of or seen a college student. I suppose if you've spent 20 years living in a remote village on another continent you might find some of this interesting.
"Nathan" violates professional standards and common decency to discover such shocking things as: students relish independence and like to have fun, foreign students find Americans individualistic and parochial, and college campuses have many different activities.
In other words, "Nathan" (hopefully) wrecked her career to produce a devastatingly useless book.
College is not a linear experience of intellectual and moral development. This is news? May 24, 2008 I came across this book by accident - I am glad I did. It fit with various themes that had been bouncing around in my head since I read a report on student intellectual life at the school where I work. "Prof. Nathan" does a good job in documenting the enormous gap between the experience of college for faculty, administrators and students. Put quite simply, we inhabit different worlds. I think many college professors and administrators already know this, but "Nathan" puts some meat on the speculative bones. (Note on a pet peeve of mine: for "Nathan," as for many of the professoriate, staff - the non-student, non-faculty denizens of AnyU - never register on her radar.)
"Nathan," in her student guise, learns some interesting lessons. For example, "building community" - in the sense of trying to create spaces and opportunities for large groups of students to interact - is much more important to "Student Affairs" types than it is for the students for whom they are trying to build that community. In fact the students are very content with the community they already have, usually consisting of small homogeneous groups of friends that they met early on in their college life. The frenetic work of RA's to create opportunities for broader civic engagement usually come to naught - few students register interest, even fewer actually participate.
I don't know enough to say that "Nathan's" experiences at a large southwestern public school are representative of the experiences of today's college students in general. I am guessing that there probably are significant differences from college to college (e.g. by size of institution), and from student to student (e.g. their economic circumstances, or the degree to which they have a major or a professional destination in mind). But I think the perplexing refusal of students to "buy in" to the experience that well-intentioned faculty and SA administrators have crafted for them will resonate with many campus "adults."
I think that most students, as "Nathan's" experience demonstrates, do not experience college as the linear experience of intellectual and moral development that most faculty and administrators would want it to be. The four years of undergraduate study are less a progressive dinner than a smorgasbord of varied offerings, in which some items are eaten - as "Nathan" relates - only because they are available in a convenient time-slot. Should we be surprised? If nothing else, isn't it arguably a preview of what most graduates can expect after college? Do most college faculty and staff experience their college work - or their lives in general - as a mapped-out journey towards a defined end?
Overall assessment: a stimulating read. Recommended.
MY FRESHMAN YEAR May 7, 2008 Rebekah Nathan is a professor at North Arizona University and she is the author of "My Freshman Year". In her book, she talks about her experiences working on her undercover project while attending a college as an undergraduate. Not only did she enroll in classes and join organizations, but she also signed up to live in the dorms, because thorough her book you can clearly see that Mrs. Nathan is doing her best to find out what is happening with the young generations. The main objective of the experiment was to infiltrate the minds of freshman teenagers to find out what has changed over the last 20 years of college and to learn about their interests.
Nathan calls the university she enrolled in "AnyU" where she was a faculty member. One of Nathan`s main targets was to learn about how young people get along, and most importantly what motivates them to keep going. Even though it sounds exiting to go back to college after graduating, can you imagine moving from your house to a small dorm? Mrs. Nathan tells us in the book what she is feeling throughout her experience, so you can sense when she is depressed or having a difficult time.
Another important issue that she touched on is that there is an outstanding cultural separation. She describes the relations between white people and other ethnicities as marginal and vague because white kids mostly related to other white kids. As a consequence, foreign students that come from different parts of the world to learn about the culture and relate to the people are not given the chance to do so as they hoped. So finally they end up hanging out with people from their same or common roots.
Rebekah Nathan describes her experience at AnyU as unique and special. She remarks that it is an outstanding experience that few people, especially at her age, have the opportunity to share. The book intends to relay a message to the readers, and it is that college education is indeed highly important for personal success, but the college experience, as she describes, is most important since young students develop character and discipline. This is a great book, which is not only intended for college students but also for adults who are curious about what is going on nowadays at universities.
Students appreciate this Ethnography April 25, 2008 In the published ethnography My Freshman Year, author Rebekah Nathan describes her findings about the practices, priorities, and attitudes of the new generation college freshmen. Her detailed observations are fascinating, although they may be quite obvious to college students that have been freshman in the recent past. Her study offers insight for all those who are unaware about the behavior of college freshman: why they don't seem to take their classes as seriously as before, what freshman girls talk about in their intimate conversations, who eats with whom in the dining center, and the honest answers and opinions she receives from her one-on-one interviews. Nathan's primary research method was observation, but she also interviewed a wide range of students, and posted questions in the girls' bathroom for them to respond to anonymously. Living in the dormitories, Nathan found that the cultural norm of students was one of sociability, individualism, fun, craziness, freethinking spontaneity, and rebellion against authority. This observation contrasted starkly with the formal culture of the college, which stressed advice, academics, and warnings. In regards to student academic life, she noticed that students planned and organized their class schedules and extracurricular activities around what was most important to them. Nathan goes behind the scenes by taking classes and living in the dorms. She educates the reader in depth, and finds information that current freshman students find fascinating. Particularly interesting is what the international/foreign exchange students think of American students. It points out that current American college students should take another look at themselves and also their society. For anyone who wants to learn more about today's college freshmen, I recommend My Freshman Year. -F.T., N.O., M.C.
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