After more than fifteen years of teaching, Rebekah Nathan, a professor of anthropology at a large state university,
realized that she no longer understood the behavior and attitudes of her students. Fewer and fewer participated
in class discussion, tackled the assigned reading, or came to discuss problems during office hours. And she realized
from conversations with her colleagues that they, too, were perplexed: Why were students today so different and
so hard to teach? Were they, in fact, more likely to cheat, ruder, and less motivated? Did they care at all about
their education, besides their grades?
Nathan decided to put her wealth of experience in overseas ethnographic fieldwork to use closer to home and apply
to her own university. Accepted on the strength of her high school transcript, she took a sabbatical and enrolled
as a freshman for the academic year. She immersed herself in student life, moving into the dorms and taking on
a full course load. She ate in the student cafeteria, joined student clubs, and played regular pick-up games of
volleyball and tag football (sports at which the athletic fifty-something-year-old could hold her own). Nathan
had resolved that, if asked, she would not lie about her identity; she found that her classmates, if they were
curious about why she was attending college at her age, never questioned her about her personal life.
Based on her interviews and conversations with fellow classmates, her interactions with professors and with other
university employees and offices, and her careful day-to-day observations, My Freshman Year provides a compelling
account of college life that should be read by students, parents, professors, university administrators, and anyone
else concerned about the state of higher education in America today. Placing her own experiences and those of her
classmates into a broader context drawn from national surveys of college life, Nathan finds that today's students
face new challenges to which academic institutions have not adapted. At the end of her freshman year, she has an
affection and respect for students as a whole that she had previously reserved only for certain individuals. Being
a student, she discovers, is hard work. But she also identifies fundamental misperceptions, misunderstandings,
and mistakes on both sides of the educational divide that negatively affect the college experience.
By focusing on the actual experiences of students, My Freshman Year offers a refreshing alternative to the frequently
divisive debates surrounding the political, economic, and cultural significance of higher education -- as well as
a novel perspective from which to look at the achievements and difficulties confronting America's colleges and
universities in the twenty-first century.