Kristine's Reading Notes 9

       I thought that the book, “My Freshman Year”, reflects students views on college life and by having a professor state them, gives the merit. So many issues discussed in class from the teachers perspective were looked at from the students perspective. Take cheating for instance. On page 124, Nathan describes statistics from National Surveys taken. The definition and willingness to cheat have changed dramatically from thirty years ago. Most students today don’t see forms of cheating the same way professors do. For example, working together on homework, often busy work distributed in general education classes, have no relevance for students. Students don’t care, or don’t feel guilty about “helping out” each other, in classes that they are required to take, that don’t directly relate to their major, or that they find boring. Honestly, I can’t blame them. If all the teacher wants to do is hand out busy work, why waste your time when you could be working more or spending that extra time on a bigger assignment due in another class? I think Nathan does a great job of having compassion for students when she goes back to teaching and understands more of the daily struggles students go through. Again, this relates back to what do we define as cheating?

            This point falls perfectly into the next major theme of the book: new generation of students. Some people, especially that of older generations, view this generation as entitled and lazy. On page 33 Nathan points out that while the average time spent on class work has decreased over the past thirty years, so has the time for relaxing and socializing. Student life has now extended past classes and partying and now includes outside, paying jobs, and volunteer work. All of these things clutter a students schedule, making it imperative to choose what they focus there attention on more. I guess my question is, if professors know that students aren’t doing the reading for class and discussions aren’t meaningful, why do they continue to utilize these methods in their classroom? Students don’t have time to read four chapters per class for five different classes, its just not plausible.

Also, on the topic of discussions, Nathan pointed out that students today don’t really interact with other ethnicities (page 59). While they may encounter these students in the classroom, outside of the classroom, this isn’t the case at all. Not only are the relations not being followed outside the classroom, but even the discussions (including the most heated of ones) aren’t followed up outside the classroom!!! Students usually don’t even integrate the knowledge learned in their classrooms to their every life or discuss it with others… What is the point then? Why teach students all of these concepts that will never appear again in any part of their life?