Physically they arrive on campus this month, but for 32 incoming freshmen their “Penn experience” started last January — via the Internet.
By Caren Lissner
It was one of the hottest soap operas of the summer — and Penn alumni with e-mail accounts were invited to join in and affect the outcome. Three months ago, in June, the plot was this:
– Ariel wanted to stick her head in a blender.
– Chil had just returned from 10 days in Nepal and Thailand.
– Omar was having an “emergency” at 4:56 a.m. because he didn’t know whether to register for Econ 1 or Econ 2.
The protagonists in the drama were 32 actual pre-freshmen who are starting their academic careers at Penn this month. They already have a unique advantage over their peers — they’re armed with advice (and witticisms) contributed over the summer via electronic mail by professors and sympathetic alumni.
Dr. Al Filreis, professor of English, and Dr. James O’Donnell, professor of classics, came up with the notion last year of allowing high school seniors who’d been accepted to Penn early-decision to begin taking an electronic English course starting in January, a semester before they would ever load up the minivan to barrel toward College Green. Both men had experience with such electronic “courses”: For the previous two years, Filreis had been running a poetry discussion for alumni called “Alumverse,” which started as a free one-semester course in 1996 [“The Class From Hell,” July 1996] but has continued as a chat network since then. O’Donnell, who also happens to serve as vice provost for Information Systems and Computing, had run a course for graduate students in 1994 on the life and works of St. Augustine. The pair thought it might be good to introduce pre-freshmen to collegiate thinking before they ever set foot in West Philly, and six months later, they decided to let alumni contribute as well.
The experience has apparently benefited all participants. Filreis, O’Donnell, and select professors who “visited” the class got to converse with future students and learn their thoughts and anxieties. The class, of course, got a head start on academic thinking, on top-notch advising, and on meeting their peers. (Two students even found prom dates among their correspondents — more on that later). And the alumni got to be reminded of that glorious stage of life between high school and college, and to share their wisdom and get some back.
Now, Filreis and O’Donnell have to figure out what the next step is in this unprecedented program, especially as society (particularly Penn society) heads more and more toward incorporating electronic interaction into every segment of life. The program’s founders must figure out how to implement it on a greater scale for more pre-freshmen, where else to take it, and how much might be too much.
Subject: Oh, the irony Date: June 12, 1998 From: Ariel, C’02 It’s really funny — I got into Penn (clearly, the day that the admissions officers were, shall we say, “dabbling in psychedelics”) and yet now I’m completely incapable of figuring out a logical schedule. I feel like a lost hamster.
Such ham-stirrings were prevalent among the palindromic class of 2002 this summer, with many of them seconding Ariel’s statement of a few days earlier that she wanted to “stick [her] head in a blender” due to the confusion. Discussion of which courses to take, which professors were bad or good, and whether to take large or small courses raged for a month, only to be replaced by a lively debate over what to bring to campus. But long before the crises, the anxiety, and the patter of tiny hamster feet, the program was an intellectual endeavor.
Filreis and O’Donnell compiled a list of student participants this past December by taking the roster of 761 early-decision students and writing to the 560 who had listed e-mail addresses on their applications (a whopping 74 percent). A hundred sent back the required paragraph stating why they wanted to participate, and the professors chose the 32 best among them.
There was only one required book for the course: A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel.
“They all bought it and read it,” Filreis says. “We talked about a couple of chapters, not all that satisfactorily, but it got us started on what is it like to read, what is the future of books. We had a medieval historian and a librarian who came in and talked about it. It hasn’t been a course, per se, but more of a discussion-workshop on the nature of the intellectual life at the University.”
At the same time, the pre-freshmen got to know each other, with each being asked to submit two introductions: one as him/herself, another as someone else or even as an object. Ben from New Orleans said he was “the television set when your father channel-surfs” (“people accuse me of being random [but sometimes] you actually find something out”). Michael from Massachusetts was a combination of Montgomery Burns (the boss on The Simpsons) and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Chandra of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to be veterinarian, cited Jane Goodall. Zack from California, a rabid classical music fan, chose Gustav Mahler’s Symphony #7.
The group submitted their reasons for choosing Penn, talked about the book, and composed essays on “an intense reading experience.” Not to be one-sided, they also submitted essays on intense math experiences after Dr. Dennis DeTurck, G’78, Gr’80, professor of mathematics, visited them for a week.
“It was fun,” DeTurck says. “I had a good time. I struck up some conversations with a few of the students. Some of them had had tragic experiences with math. One woman wrote about wanting to be on a math team and being told she wasn’t welcome. I was really depressed the day I read that one. They are a lively bunch. They’ll talk about anything.”
The students enjoyed it as well. “The most recent [intense math experience],” wrote Chandra in her essay, “was last week, when I was studying for a calculus test and suddenly understood integration of odd powers of sine and cosine. I love ‘aha’ moments.”
As the semester wore on, the students discussed other things: how boring their hometowns were, valedictory addresses, and exams. Ariel met up with Zack while on a trip to California, and they toured Universal Studios together. Two other pairs of students attended their proms together. One student who did so, Chandra Hagan, C’02, says, “It all started when the class was having a discussion about housing, and I mentioned that I want to live in the German house. He wrote me a short e-mail in German and then we started corresponding. I asked him to the prom just as a friend and things progressed from there.” (This is known as an ‘aha’ moment.)
The pair currently live 90 minutes apart—a gap that’ll be bridged when they get to Penn. How’s that for a social head start?
After the proms, the students’ grueling high-school careers quietly ended, and it was time to start preparing for college.
Enter: the alumni.
In June, six months after the course had started, Filreis extended invitations to alumni on the Alumverse list and on a Writers’ House alumni list; 18 chose to join in (including me).
“Alumni participation came to us as an afterthought,” O’Donnell says. “In some ways, we’re making it up as we go along. Recent former students have a perspective that most incoming students don’t get.”
But one of the most active alumni participants was a not-so-recent former student, Karen Sternhell Rosenberg, CW’64, who sparked several debates. In one case, she asked if the “2002ers” had spent much of high school preparing for college. This prompted a flurry of exchanges on the subject of college competitiveness, with one student from an upper-crust New Jersey hamlet revealing that jealousy had gotten so intense in her senior class that one honors student keyed another’s car.
Another topic that preceded collegiate advice and intellectual banter concerned a remark by Kara Blond, C’97, that she had heard that Ellis Island was being declared part of New Jersey. She said couldn’t picture people’s grandparents having immigrated to New Jersey. Of course, the angry Jerseyans in the group rose to defend their much-maligned state.
Then, the intellectual discussions began.
Filreis asked everyone to discuss two poems. The first was Gary Soto’s “How Things Work,” and the second was “Young Woman Looking Out a Window” by William Carlos Williams, M’06, Hon’52. Participants interpreted the first poem and compared two versions of the second to see which was more effective.
Alumni were eager to nudge the 2002ers along. When one pre-freshman ended his analysis with, “I just liked the first one a lot better,” Ingrid Philipp, CW’69, responded, somewhat tongue-in-cheek:
Subject: Re: Why?
Date: July 10, 1998
From: Ingrid Philipp, CW’69
A bit of advice from a teacher and editor — for the next four years avoid any honest discussion of your feelings. You are paying the big bucks to Penn so you can learn to write objectively about all subjective emotion. After you graduate you can pay big bucks to a therapist to unlearn everything.
“The poetry analysis thing was pretty funny,”
says Rosenberg. “The English-major alumni fell over themselves explicating
and deconstructing. The high-school seniors were politely uninterested.”
Chandra Hagan corroborates this. “At times, the
alumni were far more enthusiastic than we 2002ers about the questions,”
she says, “especially when the questions sounded suspiciously like
work.”
At one point, Rosenberg wrote about having published
an early Allen Ginsberg poem in the 1960 Pennsylvania Literary Review,
which led, in turn, to several requests from pre-freshmen and alumni for
the poem. O’Donnell told the group that rising stars are still visiting
Penn.
Subject: Re: Ginsberg poem
Date: June 10, 1998
From: James O’Donnell
It’s easy to say 38 years later, GOSH ALLEN GINSBERG, but he was 34 at the time and a star but not so clearly a classic as he is now. There are interesting 34-year-old folk who turn up on the Writers’ House scope and you can chase them.
The discussing and deconstructing and explicating and exclaiming continued for a while. Then, something happened that overwhelmed all other subjects: Course scheduling.
Students can pre-register these days by phone or by computer. However, that doesn’t mean they’re finding it any easier than they once did. The forms had many students befuddled over the summer. But the 32 student members of the Class of 2002 Project had an advantage their peers did not. They could talk to Al. They could talk to Jim. They could get advice from alumni.
Subj: Re: Stick my head in a blender
Date: June 14, 1998
F rom: Mike V., W’02
The Wharton guide says to take 5 cus. Is that bad? Am I going to die from exhaustion or what?
Subj: Re: Oh the irony
Date: June 15, 1998
From: Monica, C’02
I honestly have never felt more lost than I do at this point.
Subj: Advance Registration Sheet
Date: June 15, 1998
From: Chandra, C’02
Maybe this is the weeding out process — okay, we got in, but if we can’t figure out how to register for courses, we should just drop out of Penn before we waste our money. :)
Subj: Re: Course Selection
Date: June 15, 1998
From: Karen Rosenberg, CW ’64
You guys are lucky — The people I feel sorry for are all the other members of the class of 2002, who surely have their heads in blenders right now. Each one must be feeling totally clueless and unaware that everyone else is in the same boat.
Subj: bootie treasure Date:
June 15, 1998
From: Chil, C’02
It seems like some of you are really depressed and possibly suicidal. Maybe you just need a hug (or a spanking).
Subject: Emergency
Date: June 18, 1998
From: Omar, Wh’02
Someone help me, this is serious. In the Wharton student handbook it says take econ 001 and econ 002. Does this mean take them both firstsemester? Someone reply quick because I have to finish my scheduling.
O’Donnell and Filreis asked a few people from the various schools’ advising offices to answer the questions, and the students muddled through, many later reporting that they’d gotten the courses they’d wanted. As registration progressed, conversation digressed to which professors were the best, whether lectures could ever be as rewarding as small seminars, and theories on why someone should or should not take a course.
Subj: GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF THOSE BLENDERS
Date: Jun 15, 1998
From: Jim O’Donnell
Let’s see, my freshman year. I wanted to major in philosophy. So I pre-selected: Latin (to polish off the language requirement so I’d never have to take another language as long as I lived) … Chemistry 203 … Philosophy 201 … East Asian History before 1800 … The Latin course got me hypnotized and I’m a Latin prof; the Chem course was a bummer; Philosophy 201 was a total bore and turned me off to my intended major … Note three things: (1) Lots of mistakes; (2) I survived; (3) the serendipitous choices turned out to be the most influential.
Subj: A response
Date: June 30, 1998
From: Rachael Goldfarb, C’99
A professor makes or breaks a class … Unfortunately, freshmen don’t know who’s great and who should just keep their nose in their research!
Recommended were Dr. Thomas Childers’s history course, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Annenberg School of Communication Dean Kathleen Hall-Jamieson’s Introduction to Political Communications; and the honors course “How Do You Know?” (which, rumor had it, may be taught by Penn’s president, Dr. Judith Rodin, CW’66, and Dr. Paul Rozin, professor of psychology, this spring).
After the students navigated registration, one asked if there was anything out of the ordinary that they should bring to Penn. This spurred alumni to fondly recall their dorm rooms. They suggested bringing Yaffa blocks (you know, the ones that look like milk crates); under-the-bed storage boxes; power strips; a long phone cord; an extension cord; wipe-off memo boards; posters; and halogen lamps. The last item prompted this bit of avuncular wisdom from Al Filreis: “Halogen lamps are *very* dangerous (they are true fire hazards in dorms).” In response to questions, the alumni said that a laptop computer, bike, and car weren’t absolutely essential.
After that topic passed, the students and alumni spent the first two weeks of July discussing summer work experiences, health care, whether to take Music 21 or 22, whether Omar should worry about having been scheduled for four classes in a row on Mondays, an alum’s view of how Penn had changed in five years (following a recent visit), and religions of the world. At some point, an alum who asked not to be identified shared the religious discussion with some coworkers at his firm, and even one of them got sucked into the discussion and posted some comments.
But conversation slowed down as many students went on vacation or got deeper into their summer jobs. Still, it was clear that those in the group were benefiting from the advice and camaraderie.
“The feeling of belonging to Penn before you even get there is a [big] step in that grand plan of obtaining your college education,” says Joshua Luks, W’02. “This group has contributed beyond a doubt to that feeling.”
Several students mentioned how much they valued the chance to meet their peers before coming to Penn. The group is planning a get-together for mid-September, but they’ve already thrown several parties for themselves in various locations.
A few things alumni have learned this summer about the incoming class:
Not only do they frequently quote the Simpsons, as do recent graduates; they grew up with them.
Full House was their Leave It to Beaver, their Brady Bunch, their Family Ties.
They are the first freshman class born — look away if you don’t want to read something graphic — after Ronald Reagan was elected president.
They were learning to crawl during the premiere of MTV.
And the biggest difference of all: The Internet is a way of life for them.
To today’s teenagers, blasting messages through cyberspace is second nature. In 1997, the first year the Penn admissions office asked applicants for their e-mail addresses when they applied, 5,720 out of 15,464 applicants, or 37 percent, listed one. But this year, the number jumped to 10,033 students out of 15,854 applicants, or 63 percent. Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson says he expects it to be around 80 percent next year.
So the question then becomes, how far does one take the technology? What will universities do with a course like the 2002 Project? This one started in January of the participants’ senior years; will the sequel, or similar courses at other campuses, start for applicants in September? Will they cost money, or be free? Will the University start designing mini-courses for exceptional high-school juniors and sophomores as well? (Math professor DeTurck is actually involved in setting up calculus courses for advanced high schoolers nationwide with the Sylvan Learning Center to begin this October). Will gifted middle-school students get to try it? And if the bulk of pre-college courses are confined to the end of students’ senior years, which students will be involved? Will the courses be offered to all Penn pre-freshmen? Will the participants be separated into groups of 20 or 30, much like the discussion groups that are organized during freshman orientation? Will alumni be recruited to help facilitate? And speaking of freshman orientation: will it be offered, in the future, via the Internet over the summer instead of during the first week of school?
How far will electronic college preparation go?
“We certainly want to expand it and extend it and do more of it,” O’Donnell says. “Doing more will require us to do serious thinking about appropriate resources.”
“I have asked Jim O’Donnell and Al Filreis to investigate ways to expand it in the future,” says President Rodin. “What better way for members of the new class to become acquainted, build relationships with faculty, and keep our alumni in touch with their alma mater?”
Everyone interviewed was hard-pressed to find a downside to expanding such a program — even in the face of intense prodding. But apparently, most schools are only beginning to look into such programs, if they’ve considered them at all. Brown University, for example, which began experimenting with electronic courses for alumni back in 1994, offered a no-credit Internet chemistry course for pre-freshmen this summer, but the results aren’t in yet and the school hasn’t begun to explore further options, according to Dean of Summer Studies Karen Sibley. “We’re not prepared at this point to decide what to do with distance-learning, much less distance-learning with pre-freshmen,” Sibley says. “It depends whether you want to be on the cutting edge or take a wait-and-let’s-see approach. Brown is taking a wait-and-let’s-see approach.”
The 2002ers interviewed say that none of their high-school peers were involved in such a program with the schools they plan to attend. Professors say that, as far as they know, the 2002 Project, with input from so many different sectors of the Penn community, is unprecedented.
Dennis DeTurck says that some professors are actually trying to install computers in classrooms so that the best aspects of electronic courses and discussions can be imported back into classes. “When students are in the classroom,” he explains, “some will always raise their hands, [but] others will never answer. Others will defer: ‘What does that girl in the front row who always gets it right say?’ [Electronically], it’s private,anonymous, and honest.”
Carpal tunnel syndrome notwithstanding, it is clear that decades into the future, the classes of 2012 and 2022 and 2032 will look back at an article like this one and chuckle over how primitive things were back in 1998, much the way the incoming frosh scoff at tales of the 5 a.m. drop-add lines that went the way of the dinosaurs in 1990. And, just as O’Donnell said of his own freshman-year course selection, there will have been some mistakes made during the period of adjustment — but everyone will have survived.
“I really wish this program or something like it was available when I was a pre-freshman,” says Randi Feigenbaum, C’97. “It’s great for little things, like reassurances about advanced registration and the need for halogen lamps. But it’s also an incredible forum to begin the college process a few months early. [It] gets them thinking about what they want from their Penn experience now, instead of when it’s too late. It’s made me a bit homesick for dear old Penn, and for the academic banter and social interactions that were so common there. In a way, it’s made me wish I could have a second crack at my own Penn experience. I’d probably do things very differently knowing what I know now. Since we’ve been imparting some of those nuggets to this year’s frosh class, I think they’re going to have an even better experience than I did. And mine was pretty darn good.”
The key, then, is to find the top of the curve — the point at which this type of program is most advantageous and least detrimental. Perhaps the class of 2002, when they graduate, will go on to careers in academe and dedicate their time to researching this matter, in between becoming engaged to each other, waxing nostalgic about nineties sitcoms, building a better halogen lamp, composing symphonies, and having plenty of “aha” moments.
Caren Lissner, C’93, (LiZZner@aol.com) has previously written about the Philomathean Society and done a parody of alumni notes for the Gazette. She also published a humorous op-ed in The New York Times this summer, which was promptly posted to the 2002 list by Jim O’Donnell.
