My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student in Science and Inquiry

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My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student

Rebekah Nathan

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Nov 07, 2007 Christy rated it it was ok

Shelves: education

In many ways, this book reads as a 168-page statement of the blindingly obvious. Most students are not in school because they love American literature or writing. They are not in school because they love history or anthropology or whatever subject they're studying. They are here because this is a step in 1) becoming an adult, and 2) getting a job. Some students do love the subjects professors teach, but even if they do, there are a lot of pressures bearing down on them. She actually states in th In many ways, this book reads as a 168-page statement of the blindingly obvious. Most students are not in school because they love American literature or writing. They are not in school because they love history or anthropology or whatever subject they're studying. They are here because this is a step in 1) becoming an adult, and 2) getting a job. Some students do love the subjects professors teach, but even if they do, there are a lot of pressures bearing down on them. She actually states in the final chapter that this experience has reminded her that students have lots of other classes besides hers:

"So it always comes as a surprise to me that students appear clueless about what happened in the last class, that only a minority of them have done the reading assigned, and that almost no undergraduates ever show up for my office hours unless perhaps they are failing.
I see now what I didn't see before. In the time between my Tuesday and Thursday classes in introductory anthropology I have taught only one other class, and I have spent at least some time on Wednesday arranging my Thursday class presentation. By contrast, my students have had at least four other classes in between, maybe more, and they have completed many other reading and writing assignments in the interim, in addition, perhaps, to working a job and attending residence hall or club programs.
If they were like me as a student, they feel virtuous that they're present for class, that they remembered to bring the right notebook, and that they managed to catch a bus that has delivered them on time. When class ends at 10:50, they will be off to another bus and another class, because they have designed a schedule, just as I did as a teacher, that apportions blocks of work and free time. While I am there for office hours right after class, they are taking another class with another professor who starts right on time to discourage lateness" (136).

Can I get a resounding DUH?! This passage represents precisely why I feel like this book is flawed. Nathan may address all the questions laid out in her introduction, but she does so with this attitude that the things she describes are interesting or new--or something. Sadly, however, although this book didn't do much for me, I can see it being useful for others because clearly there are lots of teachers (and administrators) who are completely disconnected from student life and who have completely forgotten what it's like to be a student. ...more

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