"N.Y. Times and Dist. Ed."
Conversations
This e-mail message was originally posted by Steve Krause and is now copied in its original form from the acw-l archives.
Virtual meetings/gatherings/teachings aside, I'm sure that most of us know what Russ was talking about with the "true college experience" (pretty problematic phrase, I agree) and can relate to it. I know I can. Bradley is also probably right (I think that's who brought this up) that most college students don't take advantage of the "cultural diversity" that typically surrounds campuses. Still, it's nice to be close enough to those things to *potentially* take advantage of them. I think this is why people often want to live or near big cities. It's not like they actually go to the ballet that often; they just want to know that they *can* go.
I also really agree with Russ when he said this:
>Where I grew up there was no chance
>whatever that I'd have ever heard a poet or a bar of real live jazz;
>even more, there was nobody else I knew who might have been interested,
>or who would have dragged me along (I went to hear Yusef Lateef because
>a bunch of people went). Once I _knew_ those things were possible,
>sure, I sought them out, but it would never have happened if there
>hadn't been a place where students & faculty hung out. This isn't about
>bricks and mortar, for sure -- but it _is_ about a culture. And sure,
>virtual cultures exist: but they are _much_ harder to learn to make
>real.
I grew up in Iowa-- in the college town of Cedar Falls, no less!-- and the culture and world I encountered at the University of Iowa in Iowa City was so much more interesting and diverse and all of those good things than I would have encountered had I stayed home, and I would have never been able to duplicate that experience online or as a commuter. When I was teaching in southern Oregon in the relatively cosmopolitian and sophisticated town of Ashland (big tourist town and big theater town because the Oregon Shakespeare Company performs there), I had students from these towns of 500 or less coming in and being blown away by what the "big city" had to offer. Some of them floundered of course, as some students do in almost any situation, but I think most of them broadened their proverbial horizons, one of the goals (hopefully) of college.
Sure, there is a certain level of privledge on my part about being able to praise these experiences, and sure, I may be prematurely nostalgic. But I believe my college experience would have been significantly *different* had it been an online experience, and I guess I'm saying that I think that the "true college experience" is a better one, much in the same way that I'd rather talk to people f2f than in a MOO or listserv or what-have-you.
--Steve
vol. 4 Iss. 1 Fall 1999