Paper 2 Draft
Word Count: 3350
A Student’s Intellectual View of Higher Education
Community and diversity are two of the most prominent factors colleges and universities use to attract students. At Temple University, it is easy to see that the school tries hard to implement these words into our heads whether it be succeeding or failing in reality. Temple makes it known in their mission statement, policies, and standing proof that they surely uphold the title as being one of the most diverse schools in the nation. However, after reading the chapter about Rebekah Nathan’s experience in My Freshman Year, I recognized her assessment among freshman is similar to that of my own granted it had not been completely accurate on everything she said. The extent to which community and diversity bring students together at Temple University can only be truthfully determined by a student’s opinion. Believe it or not, the importance of community and diversity at Temple seems to be succeeding for me more than at AnyU for Rebekah Nathan, provided by evidence from both her and others.
In the chapter from My Freshman Year titled “Community and Diversity,” Rebekah Nathan steps into the life of a freshman college student at her university much like my life right now. She was enrolled in classes, lived in the dorms, and communicated with the other students. It all started when she attended the infamous “Welcome Week,” or rather what she believed to be an entertaining gathering exploring historical events that meant little to nothing to students. Nathan adds, “It is clear what the common heritage has been constructed to be. What holds students together, really, is age, pop culture, a handful of (recent) historical events” (229). This was just the beginning to her list of doubts in students. Rebekah Nathan constructs an opinion before she actually encounters what the life of a freshman is truly like. My question is how can she determine this just by attending