Reader Question: "Do I REALLY need to do the Freshman Reading?"

With Vassar just a couple weeks away for the Class of 2014, I've gotten a few e-mails asking about the freshman course reading. Do we really have to do it? Will everyone else have read it? When will we talk about it?

Each year, Vassar selects a book to be read by the entire incoming class. This year, it's Gerald Graff's acclaimed Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind (Yale University Press). After discussing the book with your fellow group and in your Freshman Writing Seminar, you will hear directly from the author at a large event known as the William Starr Freshmen Course Lecture.

How often do you get to read a book, discuss it in depth, and then engage the author in a dialogue? Pretty amazing.

My freshman year, the Class of 2010 read Shalimar the Clown, and then were treated to a lecture by the world-renowned author, Salman Rushdie. The next year, freshmen heard from Tim O'Brien, author of the famed Vietnam War-era memoirs The Things They Carried and In the Lake of the Woods. Then it was Elizabeth Kolbert (journalist for The New Yorker) who discussed her Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change. And last year (one of my favorites) the freshman class were treated to Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States.

My advice: you should absolutely read Clueless in Academe. No, you won't be tested on it. Vassar isn't like high school. But trust me, you'll be happy that you did. Not only do you get the obvious intellectual benefits of reading the book (it's supposed to be hysterical!), but the assignment gives you an instant bond with your future classmates. Just think: No matter how different you and your roommate might be, you'll be able to quickly break the ice by asking, "So, what'd you think of the book?" It's an instant conversation starter.

What's also cool is that when you arrive at campus, virtually everyone will have read the book over the summer -- the staff, the professors, the deans, and of course, your classmates. In a school filled with unique perspectives, the freshmen reading provides common ground for the whole community. So happy reading!