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Winter 2006

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Going Native
What an anthropologist learned when she went back to college as a freshman

—Carol Cambo




	My Freshman Year: What A Professor Learned by Becoming a Student; Cornell University Press, 2005.

YOU'VE BEEN OUT OF COLLEGE a decade or two. Maybe more. Would you go back if you had the chance?

When 50-something Cathy Small ’71, professor of anthropology, waited in line to get her dorm assignment as a freshman at Northern Arizona University (NAU) in the fall of 2002, it wasn’t to relive her carefree youth. Instead she wanted to make sense of the students sitting in her classroom. “I noticed I was looking at students as if they were from a different culture,” explains Small, whose past writings have focused largely on immigration, globalization, and life in a Tongan village. “So I did what an anthropologist does. I lived among them.”

The resulting book, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, reveals a student culture that may shock parents and educators alike. Small, who went undercover to experience dorm life, shuttle buses, intramural sports, and a full course load (she wrote the book under the pseudonym Rebekah Nathan but was later “outed” by a USA Today, reporter), discovered that students believe two-thirds of their learning happens outside of classrooms and lecture halls. She found that to thrive in college today students must become clever managers of time and resources. “I was overwhelmed by the amount and diversity of things I had to manage,” admits Small.

In her book, Small outlines a theory as to why today’s students need time-management skills. Over the last several decades many state legislatures have cut funding for public universities, which have, in turn, raised tuition rates, so most undergraduates today are burdened with loans to support their schooling. As a result, students have adopted a bottom-line approach. They take the safest, least costly route to a secure job—and income with which to repay those loans (which is likely one reason why, says Small, enrollment in English and philosophy departments is on the decline…). Today’s university students place high value on grades and credits, as well as volunteer and work experiences to plump up their résumés. Students put their critical thinking to work coordinating cumbersome schedules and balancing academic demands with part-time jobs instead of engaging in intellectual debate for its own sake. Nowadays it’s wiser to write a paper that reflects the professor’s view than waste precious time fighting for an original idea. In smooth prose sprinkled with relevant historical and theoretical digressions, Small shares other discouraging discoveries in her book, such as the lack of ethnic diversity in students’ social networks and a pervasive ignorance about world geography.

But Small found reasons to be encouraged, too. Students were mostly kind and friendly, and most would not take a degree if it were given to them and miss out on their college experience. There are healthy pockets of intellectual and political life to be found in various university subcultures, including those of environmentalists and evangelicals alike. She witnessed dorm- and classmates earnestly weathering a rite of passage to adulthood. And while modern students consume alcohol as heartily as generations before them, they are more responsible than Small’s peers in the 1970s. “They are more aware of substance issues in general,” says Small, “and students are more likely to call a cab or designate a driver than in my day.” She admits, though, that her weakest insights came in the social realm. “I wasn’t invited to many three-keggers,” she says.

While some of Small’s findings are troubling, she reminds us it’s best to take a long view; she was a less-than-perfect student in her day and now holds a PhD and a tenured professorship. “I was the worst undergraduate in my UMass days; it’s embarrassing. One semester I got a .9 and another 1.8.” Small says she was a product of her time, when students were less materialistic and rarely held outside jobs. But even then, most learning took place outside of the classroom. “I was a great example of a student who couldn’t get it together, one who partied too much. That was my life then.”

Small’s life now is that of dedicated educator and researcher, and she immediately put her findings to good use. “If students learn just 35 percent in the classroom, and my class is just three credits out of 120, I need to tie in my classroom work with the rest of their lives,” says Small. She developed a new course for freshmen and sophomores, Anthropology of Everyday Life, with this in mind. “So if we’re talking about kinship and relationship, for example, I have them write a personal ad, then we look at ads from other cultures and see how the ideas of relationship compare,” says Small.

My Freshman Year is also having impact on a larger scale. The president of NAU has made it required reading for all administrators; Small’s findings are resonating with leaders at educational institutions around the country and the world—she has been able to accommodate only a fraction of the invitations she’s received to speak at universities and national conferences. The international media, including major outlets in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, have run stories on the book with an eye to understanding their own students. Now in its fourth printing, the book has gotten students’ attention as well. One recent student review of her book began by thanking the author for writing it, for unveiling truths about the college experience. And Small is working with experts who would like to use her research to make institutional policy changes that better reflect and accommodate current college culture.

Life as a freshman changed Small’s teaching in other ways. She saw how personal upheaval wreaks havoc on a delicately balanced schedule. “As a student, I saw those who were holed up or had gone home for some emergency, wondering if a professor would accept a late paper as a result. I gained a great amount of empathy for students, especially those drowning in the details,” says Small. “I have the same class policies, but I’m more likely to change policy for individual circumstances. Now, if I notice a student has missed a couple of classes, I e-mail, ‘Are you okay?’ not ‘Class policy dictates a drop in grade for your absences.’” Small says her evaluations reflect a change; she now gets comments like “she really understands what we’re going through.” As further reinforcement that she’s on the right track, Small was named NAU’s Teacher of the Year 2004-2005.

While Small was glad to leave behind heat that couldn’t be turned on or off, mediocre food, and cliques within her dorm, she misses the constant buzz of campus life. “I loved having my door open and listening to the language and music of student life,” says Small. It’s a good bet that this anthropologist still has her ear to the ground.

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