What Is PREFACE?
PREFACE combines academic courses like English 101-102 with extracurricular activities such as visits from nationally known authors to create a meaningful social and educational experience for all USC Upstate first-year students. Each year the entire USC Upstate community from Student Affairs to academic departments offers a range of activities centered on a single theme to help you meet staff, faculty, and fellow students while you learn more about the PREFACE theme. Join the PREFACE group on Facebook to stay informed about upcoming events and course requirements.
PREFACE Theme 2009-2010--Life in the Low Wage Trenches: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
As you enter USC Upstate this fall, you’ll be a part of a special reading, writing, and discussion experience. In every English 101
class, first-year students will read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. This provocative, heartfelt – and often funny – account of life in the low-wage trenches challenges our assumptions about American prosperity and hardship.
Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric promising that any job equals a better life. But can anyone survive, let alone prosper, on $6 to $7 an hour? To fnd out, Ehrenreich took the cheapest lodgings available and went to work as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing-home aide, and Wal-Mart salesperson. She soon discovered that these low paying jobs require exhausting mental and physical effort, but minimum wage is not a living wage.
Nickel and Dimed is an especially appropriate study this fall as the USC Upstate community, our nation, and our world face the challenges presented by economic uncertainly. Events in the PREFACE series will give us a better understanding of the book, of the economic issues we face, and of the ways we can respond to help ourselves and others.
These events include:
- A campus visit by author Barbara Ehrenreich on September 17
- Roundtable discussions featuring USC Upstate faculty and staff, student leaders from Upstate, and community leaders
- "Stump the Profs," a Nickel and Dimed trivia contest pitting students against their instructors
- A film series
- "Landing on the Right Squares," a board game marathon and discussion of rolling the dice in real life
- A student-led conference, students leading students in exploring the ideas and issues raised in Nickel and Dimed
- Opportunities for volunteer service
The intent of this series of programs is to help USC Upstate first-year students make connections to each other and to the University, to practice skills that contribute to success in college, and to discuss how a deeper understanding of a shared reading can inform the way we make personal decisions and influence public policy today. As we come together to read, discuss, and write about Nickel and Dimed, we hope to begin a conversation that will last far beyond your studies at USC Upstate.
For more information about previous PREFACE Program readings and events, see the PREFACE Program Archive.
Resources for English 101 Students:
Eblast Weekly Student Newsletter