My Freshman Year Book Review

In Rebekah Nathan’s book titled My Freshman Year, she goes undercover to study what college is like from a freshman’s view. In the book My Freshman Year, I have chosen the pages 94-98. In these pages Rebekah Nathan effectively explains the way of class participation and discussions among college students

In My Freshman Year, Rebekah Nathan explains how, from what she has seen, that students do not discuss or debate in class. In addition, even the discussions outside of class are of nothing to do with academics. For instance, in the beginning Nathan speaks about how teachers are having a difficult time getting to speak up in class and an answer to anything. She goes on to give example of reason why students feel the need to not speak up in

Rebekah does this in the most effective and proficient way. Rebekah starts out with us in the class room. She explains how students just don’t debate in class. Then goes on to say that the teachers can barely even get the students to speak up at all. In the light of other students not answering, she say she feels that on multiple occasions she has saved the teacher the agony, of no one answering, by speaking up herself. With that in mind Rebekah turned to the students to figure out why they would speak up in class. She was able to get some really good answers that really gave a good insight to the discussion. The students said that “No one listens to each other anyhow…I feel if I talk up a lot like I may be talking to much…The discussions are too teacher-directed—everyone is just saying what the teacher wants to hear” (94). These were wonderful responses that she put in, because it really gave a new view to what the students are thinking and how they feel. Next I also love how she says, “…it also made me realize that this was likely and issue that I, through my teacher’s eyes, considered much more important that most students did” (95). It was so fantastic how she was able to put her old perspective as a teacher in with her new perspective as a student together and come up with this new conclusion. So if students are not talking about academics what are they talking about? She explains and gives plenty of examples of what the students are and are not talking about. She explains that they are not talking about whether they enjoyed the material or how they felt about it. Instead the closest thing they get to academics is far from deep. Students say things like, “How did you do on that paper...What did you put for number 19…I mean, I didn’t know what he wanted—I just guessed and b.s.-ed my way through this” (96). Lastly I really liked