A Couple More Chickering/Reisser Thoughts...

In reading the criticisms of Chickering and Reisser (in Evans, Forney & Guido-DiBrito), I found it interesting that the motivation for Chickering's initial 1969 model was not for student affairs administrators, but for professors in hopes they would take student development into account in their curriculum. It seems that from this first model, it was the student affairs professionals that responded and where Chickering found his true audience. (And was perhaps his and Reisser's intended audience for the 1993 version.)

I've also given my blog address to my mom who was intrigued by the choice of Chickering to refer to vectors as vectors. In the book, the word "vector" is used to imply both magnitude and direction. My mom (who was a physics major) pointed out to me that "vector" is a physics term used to imply speed and direction. For example, mph is only speed, but a vector would imply both speed and direction. Chickering must have had this in mind when creating his inital model.....

A Learning Experience - From the Vector Perspective

Looking back on my college years, one particular event sticks out in my mind as a major developmental experience. I will discuss this experience and reference Chickering and Reisser’s vectors along the way.

In my first year of college, I was involved in different groups and organizations, but my closest friends were five women that lived in my dorm. We were all first year students that bonded quickly and strongly - so much in fact, that I did not experience any homesickness in my first year away. We all decided to move as a group into a dorm together for our sophomore year.

During my sophomore year I noticed that one of my friends was having problems, was withdrawing socially and was partaking in some self-destructive behavior. In retrospect, I should have spoken to my SA (student advisor), HP (hall president), res life director, dean, or someone at the health center – anyone in an “authority” position that could help. Instead, my other concerned friends and I gathered together to talk about her problems. I knew some things about this friend that my other friends did not know and I disclosed them, thinking I was doing the right thing. Suffice it to say that my friends went and talked to her when I wasn’t around, told her everything I had said, and everything blew up in my face. This was a rough lesson in my development of interpersonal competence (vector one) “knowing when and how to communicate what to whom” (Chickering & Reisser, 1993, p. 75).

While I admittedly had done something very wrong, my friends treated me poorly through the whole ordeal. I was ashamed that I could hurt someone I cared about so deeply that I accepted my friends’ behavior towards me thinking that I deserved to be treated that way and saw myself as a “bad friend.” Instead of realizing I was a good person that had behaved badly, I saw myself as a bad person which Peterson, Schwartz, and Seligman (1981 as cited in Chickering & Reisser, 1993) noted as related to symptoms of depression. While I continued to go to class and stay involved in extracurricular activities, I was far less social and felt several negative emotions related to depression (sadness, worthlessness and an expectation of punishment) and a few physical problems as well (loss of appetite and lethargy).

With time, I became aware of both my feelings and my faulty logic. Having read somewhere that exercise increases endorphins, I started going to the gym. I also realized that I had other friends outside this close-knit circle of friends that cared about me and began to spend increasing amounts of time with them. Without the obligations I’d had to my “clique,” I spent more time on my studies, formed study groups with classmates and spent more time practicing my violin. This amalgam of experiences helped me improve my intellectual, physical and manual competence (vector one) and was also a lesson in managing my emotions (vector two) of depression and guilt.

It wasn’t until more time had passed that I realized the “clique” of friends I was part of wasn’t a healthy relationship. In my college experience up until that point, I had managed to move from dependence to autonomy from my parents (vector three), but instead of moving towards interdependence, I instead became dependent (codependent?) on this group of friends. They became my family and we clung to each other in a needy way. Some of my friends hadn’t developed friendships outside the group, and several of them not only planned their schedules around each other, but also registered for the same classes. Reading this passage from Chickering and Reisser’s fourth vector reminded me of this experience:

“Schedules are arranged to permit maximum closeness. Other friends fade into the background. Sometimes classes and homework go by the wayside. Students may also fuse with a group, spend all their time hanging out together, and even take on characteristics of the group, forgetting that they exist as separate beings.” (p. 162)

It was in my break from this group that I was able to truly move from dependence to autonomy, (the first step in vector three) and begin my journey of developing healthy intimate friendships (vector four).

While I knew there was nothing I could do to reverse my past wrongdoings, I knew I could control my future actions. Half way through my sophomore year, the girl who was my first-year roommate (and very close friend) returned to campus after a semester away. We were lucky – there was an open room that we could both move into. While the room was in the same dorm as my former “clique” I was at least on a different floor. I didn’t fill her in on what had happened with our friends, just that I was spending more of my time on my studies and on extracurricular activities. I decided that instead of trying to cling tightly to her friendship and fill her head with negative stories and speak ill of my former friends (who were still her friends), I would just let things be. For me, I think this marked the beginning of establishing my own value system and it was definitely the first situation where I made a conscious effort to uphold a value that I had established for myself. I see this as related to Chickering & Reisser’s seventh vector, developing integrity, where I was moving away from acting in my own self-interests towards more socially aware and responsible behavior.

While this experience was painful to deal with, I experienced more growth from it than had it not happened. It helped me become a better, more honest, and trustworthy friend, and helped me define and uphold my ideals of friendship. By my senior year, I had many good friends and acquaintances, as well as a handful of very close friends. We did not feel the need to live on the same floor (or even in the same dorm) and were involved in our own things – different extracurricular activities, work, and different academic studies. Instead of living, sleeping, eating, breathing and spending every waking hour possible together, we all did our own thing but made time for and shared our lives with each other. In the context of my undergraduate college experience, I was able to move to an interdependent relationship with my friends (vector three) and was able to balance my time among myself, my friends, and my romantic relationship (vector four).

To end this exercise, I want to emphasize that the development continues. Just because one touches on several of Chickering and Reisser’s vectors in college doesn’t mean they have developed “competence” in all those vectors in all aspects of life. For example, being able to manage one type of emotion does not necessary mean one can manage all emotions, and just because one is able to develop healthy intimate friendships doesn’t mean one is able to develop healthy intimate romantic relationships. I chose to share this experience because while it was only one of many experiences I had in college (I haven’t even talked about identity yet!), but it provided me the broadest context on which to view my development from the vector perspective.

Chickering & Reisser's Vectors: Initial Thoughts

Whew! So I just finished reading about all the vectors last night but I wanted to post something about the readings before class. As I mentioned in my post after reading Ch. 1, I made a list of what I saw as my "biggest" college developmental gains, experiences and challenges, as well as my thoughts about my undergraduate college's role in supporting student development and continued reading Ch. 2-8 with this in mind. I will post these thoughts in forthcoming blog (probably tomorrow), but right now I want to give my overall view of Chickering & Reisser's vectors.

1) The vectors were extremely general with great overlap. I often felt that as I read through the book, the exact same thing had been mentioned when discussing a previous vector. I had many moments of "Didn't I just read this?" Granted, many of the vectors are interrelated and complex and lines must be drawn somewhere to define the vectors. My reason for saying the vectors were general and had great overlap was that I was reading through the chapters with my college experiences in mind and one particular experience I had was almost (but not quite) an all-vector encompassing experience. -Is this possible? Is this right? (I promise to clarify this in a future blog).

2) The actual "process" of movement among, within, and between vectors isn't discussed. The authors go through (at great length) examples that occur within vectors, nothing was carried through. I think that in addition to reading this book that has information and experiences split into vectors, it might be interesting to "follow" a single student's college experience to see what the interplay is between the vectors - what vectors are experienced when and how.

3) Role of college environment (institution type, etc.) - The more I thought about the vectors and my experience, the more I thought about how students' experiences may differ depending on the type of institution they attended. For example, I see my college as fostering development and identity exploration and perhaps not quite as focused on helping us find a job after college whereas, an institution like Johnson & Wales (self-proclaimed as “America’s Career University”) aren’t as focused on student development as they are on internships and job-linking. Stan and I discussed this – what’s better, knowing yourself and not having a job, or having a job and not knowing who you are? (Personally, I think it’s all relative. I’d like to think that one who has a strong sense of self and direction will be capable of finding meaningful employment and that one who is gainfully employed will be able to continue down their path of self-discovery.)

4) College as a context. I think it’s important to remember that college is a context for development. My interpretation of these vectors is that college is kind of the “first-pass” through at least some of the vectors. Let me explain. I think many people have some of the building blocks for these vectors before college. Then they go to college where they face a new experience and must adjust to change in many ways and on many levels. Students come out of high school and their relationships with friends and families (Chickering and Reisser mention the role of the parents several times) with preconceived notions and ideas of who they are and what they value. In college, they break these down and are able to reconstruct and re-build in several areas. However, I also think students will exit college and enter the “real world” which will once again give them cause for re-evaluation and re-examination. After all, though one may be more developed as a result of college, aren't their college experiences still preconceived notions but just now based on a new experience? Adjusting to change – whether it is moving to a new city, a new relationship, a new job, or some type of crisis may all incite further deconstruction, further rebuilding, and further growth. This led me to thoughts such as, “Must it be college?” What if someone graduates from high school, enlists in the military and goes off to bootcamp? I’m sure the experience is different from college, but I don’t think it can be denied that people will grow (in one way or another) from their experience in the military.

5) I’ll buy it. While I find the vectors to be almost too general in some aspects, I think it serves a good purpose and I can see its utility and how application of this knowledge by colleges and universities can help to promote healthy and holistic development. In fact, I think this is the way Chickering and Reisser’s vectors were intended to be used. I do not think they wanted their model to be the DSM-IV of college student development upon which you are to “diagnose” development on a scale. I think they wanted it to serve as a guide for institutions and administrators to use and show examples of how complex student development is, and that there is something that can be done to guide students down their own developmental pathways. In this aspect, I think it is and can be quite effective.

Chickering & Reisser, Ch. 1 --- Why?

So, Stan and I got to chatting about our reading and we were thinking about exactly why DrM wanted us to focus on Ch. 1 so much. It was a very dense read with so much going on – a ton of history, different theories and theorists – it was difficult to digest. Many of the theories are so similar and since they often build upon one another, they kind of blend together. I think there’s even a blend of cognitive and psychosocial definitions as well (i.e. cognitive isn’t ONLY cognitive and psychosocial can be inclusive of cognition). I think really, the importance of Ch. 1 is that it provides the foundation, the framework, and the context upon which they build their vectors.

I thought the preface of the book was excellent. They told you exactly where they were coming from, what they believed, and what the goal of their theory was and wasn’t. I’m glad they stressed that there is no right model for every student – that you cannot apply every aspect of every theory to every student. On a larger level, they also said “the strength of higher education lies in its wide-ranging institutional diversity” (p. xvi-xxvii) that there is not a goal to prescribe one model for all institutions as the be-all, end-all, and cure-all.

I spent way too much time reading Ch. 1 because my brain has a tendency to wander through thoughts and I couldn’t help thinking of my undergraduate college experience at Mount Holyoke College and think about the ways MHC did and didn’t foster different types of development – the ways I found it superior, and the areas that could have been improved. After reading Ch. 1, I made a list of what I felt were my greatest developmental challenges, gains and experiences in each year of college. Hopefully I’ll be able to expand on this in the context of different theories as I go through this semester.

THAT Erikson!

I started thinking about what DrM said about Freud vs. Erikson. Erikson built on Freud (and Chickering and Chickering & Reisser later built on Erikson), but with the notion that we have some control in our personality. ALSO, that the hardcore personality theorists say that once you're in you're 20s, your personality does not change.

I just wanted to point out this Jim Henson quote that I enjoy:
"If you take who you are and work with it over and over again, there's a pretty good chance you'll end up who you want to be."

Why am I pointing this out? Because regardless of your personality (however set it may be), I believe we control our decisions and our actions. So the moral of this little story is: Don't deny your autonomy!

ALSO, I was surfing around online to find out more about Erikson (I remember studying his personality theory in my undergraduate psychology classes) and found that his son was Kai Erikson! THAT Erikson! Got it! Kai Erikson is a sociologist that studied natural disasters and I distinctly remember reading "Everything In Its Path" about the flood of Buffalo Creek (which - if memory serves me right - is in the Appalachian mountains) in the second semester of my first year of college. Yes, the book was that good - I actually remember it!