Summary Of My Freshman Year What A Professor Learned By Becoming A Student

In a society where a collegiate degree is almost necessary to make a successful living, the idea that a student cares less about the education and more about the “college experience” can seem baffling. In My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, Rebekah Nathan, the author’s pseudonym, tackles the idea that academics are less impactful on a student then the culture of college life. Nathan, a 50-year-old cultural anthropologist and university professor, went undercover as a college freshman for a research project. From her research, she hoped to better understand the undergraduate experience by fully immersing herself in college life. To do this, she anonymously applied to “AnyU,” a fake acronym for a real university,

She begins the chapter by explaining the importance of invisibility in the classroom. “Don’t be too noticeable is the rule” that is commonly known by most students (91). She elaborates by explaining that a student should not add new information into a conversation yet ask a question that would concern all students about upcoming work or tests. Later in the chapter, she highlights that the instructor 's main role in the classroom is “getting [students] to say something” because students felt pressured into remaining silent (94). This pressure came from personal self-doubt and the desire to not be defined as unintelligent. In conclusion to these points, Nathan states that “despite official assertions about the university as a free marketplace of ideas, the classroom doesn’t often work that way in practice” (95). In addition to in class discussions being intellectually weak, conversations outside of class rarely involved academics, but when academics were mentioned, there was a limited set of a few questions like “‘Did you do the reading for today?’ and ‘Did we have anything due today?’” (96). She explains that no students ever asked question about how interesting assignments were because they “weren’t acceptable or normative topics to introduce” while outside the classroom (96). Based on the lack of intellectual discussions in and out of class, Nathan concluded that academics play a minor role in the life of

In a study she conducted, there are some weaknesses. She places heavy emphasis on the study where she asks 38 women “if the university would hand you a bachelor’s degree right now, … would you take the degree and leave?” (101). The weakness of this study is the fact that the sample size is a mere 38 women. It is not a high enough number when considering the thousands of undergraduates that are enrolled in her university alone. Then, only 13 responded that they did not want to miss out on the college experience; this proves nothing of undergraduate preference of the college experience. When considering the college experience, it is difficult to define what that truly means. Nathan presents it as “the joys and benefits of living within the college culture rather than in the real world,” but her definition is not set (102). I am having the college experience, but I am not “living within the college culture” because I live at home and commute to school (102). I do not experience dorm life or the constant being on campus, but rather I live a life with some college culture. I also feel the pressures of the “real word” when I balance a budget for my education and go to my job at a school district that is building my resume as an educator (102). My college experience can be defined as the joys and benefits of attending college and the occasional event. Although neither