Chapter 1 Graphic Organizer Derek N.

I made this graphic organizer on chapter 1 to emphasize all the things the author attempts to do to fit in. I believed the first chapter was primarily focused on many of these points. The author explains on page 10 of how she attended every possible social  event and club during welcome week to get to know the campus and the people in it. She also has trouble adapting to the new words and lingo used by the students.  She explains "I would have to master my current speech convections," then continues to list all the words she had never experienced before (Nathan 13). She takes part in some sports, and attends many athletic events. Her biggest problem seemed to be bridging the age gap between her and the students. She tries to talk to students as another student but is often seen as a mom back for a degree. In terms of challenging authority, she is confronted by RA's for consuming alcohol outside of her dorm room on page 12. She explains how she was embarrassed but refers back to the idea, that if students see her challenging authority, they will accept her for one of them.

Chapter 1 Summarizer Liz Diede

 The opening chapter of Rebekah Nathan’s book “My Freshman Year,” explains the purposes of her study on the culture of undergraduate students in college. Nathan, a cultural anthropologist and professor, describes the differences she sees in students today from the community of people that she went to college with twenty years previously. She cannot understand why students do not take advantage of her office hours when they are struggling, and cannot make sense of behaviors of students such as eating and sleeping during her lectures. Nathan explains to the reader that she will gather information on this culture through participant-observer research. She applied to the university that she taught at, and began her studies from a single room in a resident hall on campus. Nathan is careful to avoid misrepresenting herself while still not giving her position as a researcher away. She explains the hardships she goes through while attempting to fit in as a ‘native’ in this culture of college aged students.

Nathan’s tone in this chapter is very informational. She describes the techniques she will use in going about her research, while including some examples of her first few encounters with incoming freshmen during welcome week on campus. Rules and regulations of the university are laid out in this chapter, and the reader is informed of Nathan’s circumstances as a new student on campus. One situation explained by Nathan from this chapter that is particularly memorable is one between Nathan and her resident assistant who caught Nathan drinking a beer in the lounge of her dorm. This encounter surprised me because I assumed that since Nathan has been a professor at this university for fifteen years, she would know the rules about drinking in the resident halls. 

Chapter 1 Welcome to "AnyU"

My Freshman Year- Introduction to the Text

We four English 110 students, Clare Koopmans, Liz Diede, DJ Nichols, and Sam Smugala, were interested in the non-fiction book My Freshman Year because we can easily relate an anthropological study of college freshman culture to our own lives.  We can easily make connections between Nathan’s observations and our own experiences, but our main reason for reading this text was to understand how college professors—those who spend hours teaching our classes every year—perceive their students. 

            Our previous knowledge of this study on college freshman would be that we are the actual culture that is being studied, meaning that we have already spent six months immersed in the studied culture.  Before coming to college, however, we had heard about this culture through the book 1,001 Things Every College Student Needs to Know by Harry H. Harrison Jr. and other various texts that are created to inform incoming freshman about college social norms.  The only other related anthropological study to the culture in My Freshman Year we could think of is the movie Never Been Kissed, starring Drew Barrymore.  Barrymore plays a columnist who goes back to high school to understand the culture.

            As we read this text, we anticipate that our greatest difficulty will be to observe Nathan’s work separately from our own experiences.  Because we are a part of the culture that she is analyzing, we will constantly want to compare her experiences and judgments of college culture to the similar experiences that we are having today.  Although it’s beneficial to compare our experiences, we will have to control our biased view of the culture and see the study from her perspective.  This doesn’t mean that we have to agree with all of her conclusions, but it does mean that we must be careful with our own opinions.

My Freshman Year By Rebekah Nathan