1. Do you think Nathan’s overall findings accurately describe the undergraduate culture? What areas of her results do not represent the characteristics of a freshman college student based on your own first year experience?
We feel that Nathan thoroughly researched the culture of undergraduates and that the majority of her findings are accurate. Her observations of the decorations of dorm room doors closely aligned with what the members of our group have noticed on many of the doors of other freshmen students. Pictures and whiteboards are very common on the doors in female halls, as Nathan described in chapter 2. However, we believe that Nathan unfairly judged the students in these halls based on what she saw on their doors. We agree that the subject matter and type of objects that are placed on the outside of a door is not representative of a person’s personality or lifestyle necessarily, although it can be an indication of what type of person that individual is. We decided that it would have been beneficial for Nathan to ask permission to enter the rooms of the individuals of the doors that she observed and interview them and also observe the type of decoration that is displayed on the inside of the room. What is placed inside a room rather than on the outside of the door can vary drastically, and it is not fair of Nathan to make assumptions about these college freshmen.
2. What type of research was effective in observing the undergraduate culture?
What other techniques could Nathan have used to gain a more realistic understanding of the culture she was studying?
While studying college freshmen, Nathan often observes the behavior of these students while also incorporating interviews into her study. An example of the observations that she does would be when she sat in the cafeteria to determine which racial groups sit together and converse during their lunch hour. We feel that this would be the most effective way to gather information of a very large population such as the people in a campus cafeteria. Her interviews we feel were effective to an extent, however she seemed to interview many more international students compared to the number of non-international students. These interviews made her results seem biased and very judgmental of the American campus culture. We think that another way that Nathan could have successfully gathered information would be to send out a survey to the entire campus via e-mail to get more widespread responses from people of different cultures, interests, majors, and hobbies. We feel that this would make her results seem less one-sided.
3. Who do you think Nathan’s published findings are directed towards?
We feel that the cover is very obviously directed toward a college-aged student, since the words are highlighted and are in bright colors such as orange and yellow. However, we think that some of the chapters in the book seem to be directed more towards professors at universities such as AnyU. In chapter 7, Nathan describes everything that she learned from her experiences as a freshman, and discusses the behaviors of students that would be beneficial for professors to understand. Some examples would be the realization of what types of assignments students are less likely to do and understanding why some students may eat or seem inattentive during a lecture. Another reason that we feel this book may be published for professors to read is because Nathan describes the changes that she made to her own class syllabus to make it more flexible and student-oriented, we feel that this was a way to get other professors to understand the reasons why many students don’t show up for class or during any office hours.
4. What types of students that Nathan failed to address in her study of
undergraduate freshmen?
Although Nathan included international students and students of many different clubs and organizations on campus in her study, we feel that she left out some groups of people in her overall study. Nathan did not consider non-traditional students in her research, she only mentioned students who were between the ages of 18 and 20. We feel that this is a large population that she left out, because we have noticed a lot of older, non-traditional students on campus at Eau Claire that could also be considered as freshmen. Also, Nathan did not address students who commute from home to class. These students, living off campus, miss out on the dorm and cafeteria experience and may have a whole different perspective on life as a freshman. We think that Nathan might have chosen to not include these two groups of people because they are outliers in the study, and the majority of undergraduate students are between the ages of 18 and 20 and they often do choose to live on campus.
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