“Survival Secrets of College Students” by Mary Kay Shanley and Julia Johnston provides incoming students with an inside look into life as a freshman. To decrease college stress factors, Shanley and Johnston have complied their knowledge and current information from a variety of resources, including undergraduate students from colleges and universities across the country.
By Aja Hannah
Staff Writer
“Survival Secrets of College Students” by Mary Kay Shanley and Julia Johnston provides incoming students with an inside look into life as a freshman. To decrease college stress factors, Shanley and Johnston have complied their knowledge and current information from a variety of resources, including undergraduate students from colleges and universities across the country.
This paperback gives incoming freshman a quick play-by-play of what to expect during their first year, even returning home for breaks. Ideal for the recent high school graduate, this light read is fast-paced and gets straight to the point. While some quotes inform students of serious problems, other quotes reflect on the funnier issues, like how to handle naked beer slides.
With titles and subtitles marked in blue, a student wastes no time in finding a specific topic. Informative and quirky, the authors also keep the book updated with information on current social networking sites, such as Facebook, and websites that help incoming students prepare for classes, like ratemyprofessors.com.
“Survival Secrets of College Students” focuses on students taking responsibility once they leave home and enter college. The authors chose upperclassmen as well as freshmen opinions on how to handle each situation, because every student’s first year is unique. Each student finds different ways to handle their problems. Older students have had more time to reflect on their freshman experiences and really consider both the necessity and consequences of their actions while freshmen provide the latest information with experiences that are still fresh in their minds.
The students quoted weigh in their opinions on every obstacle that a freshman can face, from private to personal, educational to professional. Topics include what to bring to college, move-in day, homesickness, eating healthy, exercising, sickness, the truth about the freshman 15, laundry, waking up for early classes, waking up for any class, interacting with professors, study tips, study spots, making new friends, dealing with roommates, what RA’s are for and what they are not for, the struggle to maintain a social life and good grades on no sleep, the pros and cons of being an athlete in college, balancing a job and school, crime on campus, meeting people of different cultures and sexuality, volunteering, the always present drugs and sex and alcohol at parties, how and when to get help for depression or suicide, coping with learning or physical disabilities and the cafeteria food.
This book documents every challenge from before move-in day throughout the first year and ends in an epilogue about returning home to your parents.
But, if students still want more, another useful and quirky book to check out is The Naked Roommate: And 107 Other Issues You Might Run Into in College by Harlan Cohen. This thicker book provides more detailed tips for situations students may encounter and different issues such as walking in on a naked roommate. The Naked Roommate also employs a more formal and concrete way of solving these problems than Survival Secrets of College Students. Both provide information and opinions on topics that every incoming freshman should research.