On College Life

On College Life

YA nonfiction
No one saw this coming. I ran out of library books.
Fortunately I was prepared with a stash of books I'd picked up at yard
sales and thrift shops for exactly this kind of emergency. What's
pretty neat is I had two books on college life: one a serious guide
and the other a spoof of serious guides. Who better to evaluate them
than a future student services professional?
Things have changed a lot since many parents of high school
students attended college. When I attended Gordon College we didn't
have the hook up culture as a "relationship" norm. OK, I went to a
seriously Christian school. But in the early eighties I don't think
it had penetrated (bad pun intended) the Ivies. Even more important,
those ubiquitous electronic devices hadn't made an appearance. While
computer science classes were attracting the technology inclined,
electric typewriters (gasp!) were state of the art for most of us.
At least many of the basics such as getting financial aid and
selecting classes are essentially the same. For first gen(eration)
students, however, the transition from high school to college can be a
formidable, scary one. There are so many seemingly arcane details to
handle. Many perfectly qualified students can feel like they don't
really belong.
Harlan Cohen's The Naked Roommate And 107 Other Issues You Might
Run Into in College is the book I wished I'd had when my children
started college. I would have given each a copy. Cohen has
interviewed students on hundreds of college campuses all over
America. Each of his 108 tips is centered around a nugget of wisdom
from a current student or recent grad and contains the story behind
the epiphany.
Tip #1, for example, Expect the Unexpected, is expanded to
"Don't create too many expectations. You might think you know what
will happen in college, but really you don't."
The narrator, a Northwestern University freshperson, found that
earning good grades and making friends proved a lot more challenging
than she'd expected. A long distance relationship she expected to
last forever was impossible to maintain.
Cohen doesn't tiptoe around the tougher topics: sex, drugs,
alcohol, STDs... For instance, in the chapter about fraternities and
sororities he includes:
"And now, this is where the chapter gets ugly. Sometimes people
get carried away and 'tradition' overrides rational, intelligent
behavior. That's when members end up forcing pledges and other
members to do stupid things. And if you're someone who wants to
belong, you might do things you never wanted or expected to do,
because not doing these things can mean not being part of the group.
But please, never put up with hazing. In fact hazing is a crime."
If you have a family member headed for college, this book makes
a thoughtful gift.
If you're more in the mood for satire, you might enjoy Michael
Powell's Forbidden Knowledge College: 101 Things Not Every Student
Should Know How to Do. Its 101 tips cover topics such as:
*choosing a party school,
*sleeping with your professors,
*blowing off your parents,
*finding a campus booty call,
*cheating your way through exams,
and *kidnapping the dean.
If you're in the mood for a good laugh this book and a cold beer
(providing you're over 21) should do the trick.
On a personal note, I'm getting ready for Artsapalooza which is the
evening of the 16th. It's a celebration where all the venues in
downtown Orono turn into venues for music and the spoken word:
everything from the library through the restaurants to the churches.
It's a total festival! I'm back by popular demand. In fact this will
be my 4th year!!! I'm so looking forward to it! I'll be reading
poetry at Harvest Moon (which is, BTW, an awesome venue) from 7:00 to
7:40. Artsapalooza is such a blessing for writers and singers and the
kind of noncommercial community building event we need much more of.
I'm also really excited because Maine is one of the first states to
have a nonbinary gender option on drivers' licenses and state ID.
When we have them renewed we will have X instead of M or F. In the
meantime I can get a free sticker. I'm gonna so do that. You know
I'm proud to be two spirit (gender nonconforming). That's why I
prefer Jules to Julia. It feels more like who I really am.
A great big shout out goes out to the others who are getting ready to
perform and working out last minute logistics and the people who made
nonbinary licenses and IDs a reality.
jules hathaway



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