Several articles or document materials can reveal their content through the wise choice of words to represent the topic of the study. Short, precise and direct topics and theses are usually the best to use when presenting the entire content in a few words. A topic like My Freshmans year, is a simple title that just at a glance, one is able to know that the entire book is talking about the initial experiences of a person in a college or a university. Rebekah Nathan, a professor at a university writes about her experiences as a student in an environment where people had no idea that she was a professor and started treating her as a fellow student thus giving her information about the other students that she needed for her research. This book thus focuses on the different experiences that one faced as a student and comparing them as those as a lecturer and in turn concludes for his audience about the findings of how students perceives the professors by expressing her materials in the book presenting it as As Others See Us. This gives the audience an insight of what the book entails (Nathan, 90). From the authors presentation and overall overview of the study, it is clear that the American students can be well understood by leveling oneself to their level and let them feel a sense of togetherness with the person studying them. The main aim of this analysis is to look at Nathans report and obtain the key findings of this kind of research.
Some of the major goals of Nathan were to identify, generally, how students relate to each other at school and how they perceive their professors. She looks at various student aspects like, getting to know better the American students, life in a classroom, and relationship and friendship. These appear to be the main presented theses that the author vividly investigate among the students. This study will vividly look at her findings and conclusions about the same. All these are reviewed here as follows;
To begin with, Nathan tries to find out how the American students in an international school setting are. In her lengthened conversations with the international students especially the Japanese woman, she realizes the weakness of American students in terms of commitment and socialization. He Japanese friend tells her that most American students most of the time, are always very social and open to make new relations and friendships (Nathan, 87). The woman claims that the students are however poor in making and maintaining contacts with the international students. this evidence, alongside other stated instances provide a true conclusion that American students are friendly and good at making friendship and socializing but are very poor in maintaining and following up about the newly made friends and how they are up to. The author does a great job by engaging several individuals from various different countries thus it is an experience of cultural variation. This whole finding is indeed viable following my personal experience thus agreeing with the conclusion that Nathan has made following the nature of an American student.
An investigation about friendship and relationships reveals to the author that American students are poor in most relationships since they like to be independent and individualistic. This is indeed evident from the story on how an international student who had an American roommate whom they barely talked and never allowed her to use some of the things she owned like fridge. From these incidences, the researcher found out and concluded that it is indeed true that American students are independent and individualist following the fact that most of the time, they are used to do their staff by their own and being independent and not depending on someone for anything. This kind of conclusion is however strong and one should not conclude on how a person is in terms of friendship and relationship just by examining few isolated cases as Nathan did. From a personal view, this conclusion was thus not so accurate.
In this chapter; As others sees us, the last thesis statement was to look at how other students view the American student when it comes to classroom behavior. Nathan argues that the students behavior is kind of poor since most of the things they do in the classroom, however acceptable and standard, is not respectable to the teachers at all. This follows the observation by the other students like the Asian and African students who found this weird and funny. Nathan thus concluded that the American students are viewed as misbehaved in the classes. This claim is supported from my personal view following the experience that I have had learning with some of the American student in the class thus fully support the conclusion.
From the above analysis, it is just to conclude that the author maintains her focus as she strictly focus at the thesis statements of finding out how an American student is viewed by other foreign students at school. Nathan proves to be a professional writer and researcher as she only talks about what is being researched by giving relevant information about the themes and topics of research entirely. At the end of the study, she achieves the goals and objectives of the study by looking and examining the various instances to proof her thesis statements to be true. She looks at various instances making the work more accurate. It is however, recommended that for the future studies, more research should be done and conclusions should be drowned from more concrete evidence unlike in this study.
Nathan, Rebekah. My freshman year: What a professor learned by becoming a student. Penguin, 2006.
Nathan, Rebekah. "My freshman year." Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing 14.3 (2006).
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