Reflective Reading Log #2 (Part 1)

Part 1: My Freshman Year, ch. 1-3

Summary
Preface: Nathan begins her book with an overview of the circumstances that motivated her to begin this ethnographic study of college culture. As a faculty member, she had audited some courses on her own campus and realized that, despite a significant age difference, students were much more open with her when they considered her a fellow student than when they related to her as their professor. The preface raises some basic questions concerning ethics and ethnography, and I anticipate the more full discussion of these issues provided at the end of the book. As far as the preface goes, however, the author simply acknowledges the complexity of conducting research in a setting populated by uninformed subjects. Anonymity is offered as the most appropriate means to safeguard the identities of those about whom she gathered information during research, and Nathan assures her readers that everything from her own name to the name of her institution has been disguised as thoroughly as possible.

Chapter 1: The first chapter introduces the reader to three important ideas. First, the author describes the research problem. She conveys her perception that overall student behavior seems to have changed during the 15 years of her teaching career. These changes included levels of engagement in the learning process, willingness to initiate or accept contact with faculty outside the classroom, and changes in classroom decorum. Because Nathan would like to understand these changes, and because her experience auditing courses provided a small window into informal student interaction, she decides to use her sabbatical to enroll in her own institution (“AnyU”) as a first year residential student.

Second, the author describes the research site. She depicts the setting at the institutional level, but she also invests several pages describing the social and residential settings particular to first year students at “AnyU.” One of the important points made in this first chapter is that, due especially to her age, Nathan is allowed some participation in the undergraduate residential culture she studies but never experiences true social membership. She proceeds to describe some of the activities and interactions of her first few days on campus, including positive interactions like competent performance in sports activities, and negative interactions like being cited by the dorm’s resident assistants for drinking alcohol in a public area of the dorm. Although she hoped the latter would permit her entrée into the student culture (as a fellow student subject to the vagaries of authority), this does not seem to have been the case.

Finally, the first chapter covers Nathan’s basic methodology. She intends to enroll in classes and live in a dorm, participating in and observing student life from this perspective. She also conducts formal interviews, but these occur outside the dorm setting. The chapter briefly addresses the author’s intentions for responding to questions about her identity, life, and research. A caveat is also provided regarding Nathan’s potential findings. While she seeks to describe the undergraduate experience, she concedes that she will (at best) describe only the experiences of a certain group of students at a particular university during a specific era. Regardless, the author conveys her wish that the exploration that occurs within these parameters will provide some understandings that can be usefully applied beyond them.

Chapter 2: Chapter 2 focuses on an in-depth description of the dorm site. This includes physical descriptions of the common and private areas within the dorm, content descriptions of the public displays (both formal and informal) found on dorm bulletin boards and room doors, and a brief analysis of the kinds of messages conveyed by authority figures (Resident Assistants or RAs) and other members of the dorm community (individual students or roommate pairs). A description of the first mandatory hall (dorm corridor) meeting of the year provides additional insight into the contrast between the priorities of authority figures and those of the students who live on the hall. Acceptance of the RAs’ authority hinges on the balance between their assigned duties and their willingness to bend the rules or otherwise compromise the “hard line” of dorm policy.

Once classes begin, the forced socialization of freshman Welcome Week comes to a close. Students divide into self-selected social groups, and Nathan immediately realizes that she is not an integrated thread in the social fabric of dorm life. Regardless, the beginning of the regular academic schedule allows the author to begin formal interviews and analysis of student time diaries. Her central realization is that student schedules are far fuller than she had realized. Work obligations, clubs, sports teams, and other activities left students much less time to socialize or relax than some of the literature had led Nathan to expect. The author shares her observation that the multitude of involvement options available to students inhibits the formation of community.

Chapter 3: The third chapter more fully explores the ideas of community and diversity. After reviewing the ubiquity of community values among institutions of higher education, Nathan depicts community at the student level as the tension between shared characteristics and individual desires or obligations. Even membership in well-regarded organizations is described by many of Nathan’s fellow students as an abdication of individual identity. As one way of illustrating the importance of individualism over group identity, Nathan describes the egocentrism of social affiliations among the students she studies. Social networks are not closed groups in which each person identifies every other person within the circle as a member of his or her community. Instead, they exist as overlapping circles in which each member might include some members of one circle and some from another as members of that personal community.

On Nathan’s dorm hall, a general set of rules composed by a very small group of students is identified as the “Community Living Agreement” (p. 50). The students at AnyU either ignore or rebel against such attempts to define community by setting requirements (whether for dorm living or common educational experiences like a freshman seminar), and opportunities for communal participation in activities are bypassed.

The diversity section of chapter 3 consists primarily of Nathan’s study of dining habits. She describes the social settings (sameness or difference in gender and ethnicity) in which students eat. Her extensive observation of dining areas considered the group’s composition from the perspective of each member, and her analysis depicts a more frequent experience with “the other” for non-majority students than for majority students. She describes the higher likelihood of students of color to dine in groups of mixed ethnicity compared to a lesser likelihood that students of the ethnic majority will dine in mixed groups. Nathan also theorizes that ethnic organizations on campus provide an opportunity for students of color to escape from the pressure of constant inter-ethnic interactions and to relax in the comfort of “sameness” with peers of their own ethnicity.

Reflection:
Wow. I’m fascinated by Nathan’s study. One of the reasons it captures my attention so completely is that I readily identify with the setting she describes. Although my own experiences as a student took place at a much different institution than the one Nathan describes, many of the characteristics of dorm life are extremely familiar. I remember the first week activities (everything from 70’s Skate Night and Broom Ball at the local hockey rink to the harbor cruise affectionately referred to as “Scam boat”) that were designed to integrate us into the fabric of the institution. An older student, especially one old enough to have raised one of the girls on my hall, could certainly have participated in those activities, but she would not likely have experienced the event the same way the 18-year old students did. Frankly, none of the freshman guys would have tried to scam the “old lady” out of a kiss when the harbor cruise passed under the Coronado Bridge (yes, that really was why we called it Scam boat), and that young, flirtatious social dynamic is just one of many little components that contributed to the shared experience of our freshman year. Spontaneously heading out to the beach for a bonfire or jumping in my roommate’s car for a quick trip to Burbank for a filming of The Price Is Right were activities reserved for those within our immediate social circles. We might have discussed these plans with individuals outside that circle, but we spent our social time with friends—those friendships were built on shared characteristics, values, or interests. Accordingly, my friends and I spent a great deal of time with others like us—not a lot of branching out. These kinds of natural social bonds imply to me that Nathan is unlikely ever to move past novelty status with the other members of her mostly homogenous (at least in terms of age) freshman class.

I’m being a good kid and refraining from reading Nathan’s appended reflections on ethics and ethnography. I want to move through the study with her, reading her observations and analyses as she expected them to be read. Still, I look forward to the author’s explanation (or at least exploration) of issues like identity and disclosure. Some of my thoughts on those topics emerge from learning how much detail goes into IRB paperwork. As a novice researcher, I’m having a hard time understanding how this study could possibly be truly anonymous. Is the author planning never to take credit for the publication? Will it not appear on her CV at some point, its year of publication combining with her professional career movements to reveal which institution was the subject of the study? I imagine Nathan will provide a discussion of how she could maintain professional integrity as one who simply “poses” as a student, and I’m interested in reading her observations.

I really do see Nathan as a pretender. It’s sort of like the difference between wearing a shiny ring and actually getting married. No matter how close Nathan gets to undergraduate life, she just can’t experience it from the inside. Despite her actual enrollment, Nathan’s background and her own knowledge of her motivations for entering the undergraduate community combine to make her (at best) a very close observer of undergraduate life. Her grades don’t matter, a lack of social integration with fellow students is unlikely to cause serious emotional stress, and she knows her faculty job is waiting for her at the end of the year.

I heard recently about a reality TV show that requires a wealthy individual to live in poverty for a certain period of time. The participant struggles to get through the experience and eventually doles out a chunk of his or her own money to people met while “undercover,” all the while talking about how life-changing it is to truly understand the plight of the impoverished. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who knows that a comfortable bed and a huge dinner are waiting back home at the mansion has no real understanding of the hopelessness of deep poverty. Same thing here with Nathan—she can see the student experience up close, but she can’t really live it. I think she’s pretty honest about that at times, but her conceptual line between being where the students are and actually being one of them seems a little fuzzy.

The rest of the book should be fascinating. I think Nathan’s study has great potential for helping faculty and administrators understand that student life is likely very different than they envision it. The separation between academic and social spheres exists in ways that perhaps it did not 30 years ago, which leaves many faculty members with misperceptions about how students spend their time and focus their mental energies. In addition to posing some interesting ethical questions regarding the study, Nathan contributes a valuable perspective on the university from the students’ point of view.