Reflections on Nathan's My Freshman Year: 1

I really enjoy reading qualitative research. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of my journal, which is also just a mix of internal and external observations, analyzing how they interact.

Nathan's study is especially interesting, because on some levels I can identify with her experience while on others I cannot. Reading her comments reminds me of how much the positionality of the researcher affects the way they perceive their own experience. One of the greatest intrusions, if you will, on my experience of Nathan's research is our age difference. She is observing a freshman class which was not too far removed from my own freshman year (1998-1999) from the perspective of a Baby Boomer (at least she mentions being in her mid-fifties which I think would put her in that age bracket). As a result, many of her observations seem quite normal and unremarkable, and the things she notes as being strange or unusual make me notice her differences more than the differences of the students in her dormitory. For example, of course no one uses the common rooms or shows up for the community events. That's normal. What is a little remarkable is that Nathan had traveled under a different assumption when she began her study.

This surprise makes me reflect on other moments of disconnect I have had with research and the way academics talk. Authors that I read always seem to make the biggest deal about things that I often don't see as bearing on reality. Could it be a generation gap that hasn't been formally articulated? Is it possible that these tenured professors (as I assume many of them are) are just much more out of touch than I realized?

I did enjoy Nathan's analysis of community because I think it linked rhetoric to reality in a way that was new for me. Yes, I knew that college community worked in these small, isolated social circles. That was my college experience, but I don't think I ever understood what the administration and faculty were aiming for when they talked about community, that they wanted large groups that associated themselves with the institution (as I gather they do from Nathan's description). When I realize that this was actually the administration's goal, it gives me more insight on why their efforts always go astray.

As Nathan notes, American students are built this way. Getting them to invest in a larger community takes more than free pizza and an invitation. Students from my generation (which granted is over an decade past their freshman year now) require almost cult-like attraction to join a group just because they have so much else pulling at their time. There are so many opportunities to dabble that students are content not to dabble at all. They must focus on is what important, which for most of us is our deeper social and spiritual needs and career advancement. The idealistic clubiness of a university administration is outside our concern. If, however, the university chose to be that source of social and spiritual sustenance, students would commit--not 5% of their time, but more than half their time. Just in self preservation, students must limit the activities and people they invest in.

This has its reflection in diversity. Anyone can dabble in diversity (I have a classmate who I sometimes talk to who's black). Deeper investments take more intentionality and those who do it must acknowledge the price that is paid to make that investment. The other side of that is how unequal diversity is just by its nature. In most American colleges, white people must go out of their way to engage in diversity, while minorities must go out of their way not to engage in diversity. If all people are called to engage in diversity, this gives white people some small burden while increasing the burden on the minorities even more. If people of color are encouraged to engage in their own ethnic groups, white people can become even more disengaged and oblivious. People of color must learn about diversity and how to navigate from a young age, while white people need someone of color to educate them. Without making it an overriding priority, white people really never do engage in the burden of diversity the way people of color are compelled to do. The only way I see to change that is to call white students out of their white colleges and compel them to go somewhere to study where they are a minority. This, again, is not a thing to dabble in.

Perhaps that was the biggest thing I took away from these first three chapters: rhetoric on student life does not acknowledge the need for a center in students' lives, the need for a "god" to give one's life coherence and meaning. Instead many academics seem ready to toss students into a sea of good, but non-essential commitments. Students are saturated with them. They need to be called out of their comfortable nests and challenged to radical commitments that might take their whole life to fulfill. But there really aren't that many educators who are willing to go with them. We all have our comfortable nests that we don't want to leave. It's easier to give away an evening or an afternoon and throw down some money for a pizza.