Miwa's reading Notes #9

I really enjoyed reading the book “My Freshman Year” by Rebekah Nathan (2005), as her approach to become a freshman is totally surprising. I as an instructor always try to see things from students’ viewpoints when I consider my teaching, but I should not fully understand their situations until I actually stand in their shoes. Even though my appearance looks like a college student, I still greatly hesitate to behave as an undergraduate. In the sense that the author literally became a subject of her study, I could say that her experiment was quite successful.

However, our perspectives are greatly influenced by their individual culture, value, and background, and many of Nathan’s findings are not new to me because of my personal situation. I have been cross-culturally traveling (p. 134) as an international student (my current program is the 5^th one in the U.S.) for years, not only between Japan and the U.S. but also academic world and the business world. In addition, my academic life in the U.S. has been very close to the freshman’s one than the professors’ one (living on-campus, being exposed to the student community, taking courses, etc.) The situation made me highly capable of accepting different views, and I am not so surprised at freshmen’ behaviors and attitudes as Nathan was. 

Though the findings don’t surprise me so much, many of them are still beneficial for me to learn. I also cannot stop frustrating undergraduates’ irresponsible attitudes toward their study. I tend to compare their behaviors with my own experience and struggle to understanding them. Though I have much closer sense to students than Nathan did, I still appreciate to learn students’ circumstances that have generational and cultural differences from mine. For example, I have been experiencing extra difficulties in communicating with my students since I started teaching them. The difficulties are clearly different from the ones I feel when I communicate with others surrounding me (professors, colleagues, friends, etc.) I first doubted my own English proficiency, but the problem seemed to be something different. Nathan stated how difficult to have a conversation with students (p. 13), and her difficulty is very similar to the one I have been feeling with my students.   

I believe that something academically correct is not always humanly correct. Both undergraduates and instructors are humans who have to manage balancing their academic life and personal life. Therefore, both parties should at least try to take other’s individual circumstances as a human into consideration, rather than start considering their roles as students and instructors. Of course, we cannot accept everything only for the reason of personal empathy, but the perspective could still help us try understanding background lies in other’s behaviors that are hard to understand.  

Nathan’s surprises at students’ reality reversely highlighted my closeness to them, which gives me challenges to serve as an instructor. The more I feel empathy, the more I try to accommodate them. I am aware that such my attitude is not “academically” appropriate as it can invite unfairness for those who are strictly following rules. How to maintain a balanced distance from students is the most significant thing I learned from this reading.