Third Chapter Of Rebekah Nathan's My Freshman Year: Community And Diversity

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Most often, professors find an interest in the daily life of a college student, especially freshmen starting a new experience all over again. What is it like for them in college, and how does it compare to the modern college experience for the freshmen of today? A discussion on the third chapter of Rebekah Nathan’s My Freshman Year, “Community and Diversity” and how those two entities, or lack thereof can affect a student’s enthusiasm towards learning, doing homework, and immersing themselves in their own college experience. In the book, Nathan, a college professor, immerses herself into college life and makes an attempt to relive her college experience in the current time to find answers on why her students are not as animated about learning …show more content…

However, if she had been a younger professor and had been able to immerse herself in the freshman college experience, her research and her evidence would have turned out to be more persuasive and supportive. In terms of her credence, Nathan is a reliable source as a scholar, a writer, a co-founder, and an award winner but as a 21st century college student that is where it seems her credibility wavers a bit because she has not experienced the modern freshman year at the age of a typical college student. In terms of her claims and reasoning, her appeals seem to hold strong as she draws information from outside sources such as Levine and Cureton (60), and the Carnegie Foundation and the Advancement of Teaching (44) and is able to build a strong backbone for her argument. Relating to Nathan’s emotional appeals, her strategy of talking directly to the international students and sharing their feelings about diversity and community in her research was extremely effective because it gave Nathan’s audience some insight and direct evidence of her claims and the truth behind them. Overall, Nathan executed chapter three, “Community and Diversity” of My Freshman Year very well using her credence, her claims and supporting ideas, and her emotional appeals to the audience to her greatest advantage and using it to create a very persuasive