Rebekah Nathan.  2005.  Cornell University Press.  Ithaca, NY.

“Rebekah Nathan” (a pseudonym) is a professor of anthropology at a large state university.  Over 15 years of teaching, she realized that she did not understand her students.  She decided that the best way to get answers was to walk a few miles in students’ shoes – so she enrolled at her own university as a freshman.  She lived on campus.  She gave up her faculty parking tag.  Ate in the dining halls.  Attended a full load of classes.  Paid her own tuition.  This book describes what she learned from “the most expensive year of field work [she had] ever undertaken.”

This short book focuses primarily on the academic life of students.  Nathan finds some satisfying, if disquieting, explanations for student behaviors such as skipping class or not reading assignments, not attending campus events, and being overly focused on grades.  Professors, she says, don’t take these things personally,  they’re not about you.  Student culture is as invisible as an undertow, and it pulls them away from engagement with you.  Global culture, on the other hand, is all too visible, and it tells students they need to compete to succeed.

Nathan describes why community and diversity are two sides of the same coin, with ever-increasing choices for students actually working against these university ideals.  Students with more and more choices for activities are less and less likely to make lasting bonds with people different from themselves.  And if interpersonal challenges in one situation are too great, there are plenty of other things to do.

It’s not all bad.  Very significantly, the anthropologist-turned-freshman found that her respect and liking for students was restored by being one of them for a while, and that she began to change her own teaching as she returned to the classroom as a professor.  She hoped that someone, perhaps a student-turned-instructor, could eventually communicate credibly with students about their professors. 

This book is available in the TASC library.