Reading Log #3 (Part 2)

My Freshman Year, ch. 4-5

Summary, ch. 4:
In chapter 4, Nathan focuses on international students’ perspectives on American college students and American collegiate experiences. She represents the perspectives of these “outsider” or “other” students on cultural norms, sincerity (or insincerity) in interpersonal relationships, participation vs. integration, consideration for others, classroom behavior, academic rigor, faculty approachability, and student work ethic. This is one of the few sections of the book that relies heavily on quotations instead of simply providing Nathan’s interpretation or recollection of events. The chapter concludes with international students’ reflections on the deficits of American higher education and the broader American perspective.

Reflection, ch. 4:
This chapter felt somewhat out of place due to its tone and extensive use of quotations. To some extent, this makes sense because Nathan is clearly interviewing these students directly instead of simply observing them; however, I wonder why Nathan doesn’t also work to observe these students in their daily interactions with each other and with American students or faculty. Somehow, I felt that these students had an opportunity to explain themselves in a way that wasn’t available to most of the students with whom Nathan interacted. It would, for instance, have been incredibly interesting for Nathan to interview a group of students born and raised in the United States to see what they would identify as the biggest problems with America or with American higher education. I would have liked to see if some of the U.S. students would have been able to articulate the nationalistic or ethnocentric emphasis of their curriculum. It’s essential that international students be represented among the others experiencing student life at AnyU, but Nathan’s method of adding their perspective varied too much from her methods for understanding other students’ perspectives.

I also wonder about the curriculum at AnyU. One French student is quoted as saying, “There is no required history course in college” (p. 88). WHAT? Are there really colleges that don’t require world history courses? I realize that my college experience has been defined by my undergrad life at a small liberal arts institution, but I was shocked that any school with a general education program would omit basic world history as a core requirement. Incredulity aside, I found this chapter very interesting and was intrigued by the various perspectives presented here. I just felt like the approach and writing used in chapter 4 fit awkwardly with the rest of the book.

Summary, ch. 5:
Nathan starts chapter 5 with an illustration of alienation in the classroom. She describes an exercise she uses with her Anthropology students. As part of the exercise, students are asked to imagine that they are members of a community that attributes its negative experiences to the presence of a witch in the group. The students anonymously vote on which member of the class is likely to be the witch. Even though they are mostly strangers to one another, class members’ votes reveal at least some consensus on the identity of the witch. Consistently, the “witches” are the students who participate most in class, who ask meaningful questions, and who interact with the professor. Nathan uses this example to emphasize the importance students place on invisibility and sameness within the classroom. She goes on to describe the ways in which she tries to blend in with the student standard of invisibility. More importantly, she demonstrates that students value the appearance of disengagement. Questions about expectations (What do we have to do, and how must we do it?) are acceptable, while deeper questions (What does that mean? Or, How do we apply this concept?) are not.

As she proceeds through the chapter, Nathan discusses the type of discourse that occurs inside and outside the classroom. She was clearly surprised that students are unlikely to discuss classroom topics in their personal conversations within the dorm. Instead, students are more likely to talk about relational, recreational, or self-focused issues. Nathan conveys her disappointment that the life of the mind is often excluded from students’ daily interest and priorities. Some students do seem invested in the process of intellectual development, while others seem more interested in the overall experiential education of college, little of which is curricular.

Finally, Nathan discusses a course on sexuality that was recommended to her by several other students. The most important aspect of this class was that its subject matter deeply interested students, but its student-led, confidential, semi-rebellious approach to the subject matter provided the means and the motivation for students to become involved. The course successfully matched the issues about which students want to learn with methods that made students feel daring and exciting.

Reflection, ch. 5:
This chapter felt a bit unfocused to me as I first read it. As I reflect, however, I see that it’s really about a broad dichotomy regarding the situations and topics that draw student attention and the value judgments that accompany those expressions of interest. At its heart, this chapter says that students generally want to be invisible on academic issues and visible on interpersonal or relational issues. If a professor can successfully “hide” the academic issues in a cloud of relational issues, Nathan seems to say, maybe we can trick students into caring about what they’re learning. In some ways, I suspect these conclusions are fairly accurate. Students compartmentalize their lives into “classroom stuff” and “everything else,” and blurring the lines between those compartments is probably a good thing.

As I read this chapter, I kept thinking that it is the section of the book that could be most meaningful to classroom professors who just don’t understand their students. This may be a hard sell, though, since I suspect most faculty members would see students’ concurrent academic and personal lives as a problem to be solved. I do think that the extent of the disconnect between “school life” and “real life” is exacerbated by the setting at AnyU—the wall separating the two might not be quite so high at another type of institution. Still, I think this dichotomy exists and will continue to do so due, in some measure, to the developmental stage encountered by college students of traditional age as they leave their family homes and transition to a new stage of independence and exploration.