Thriving at College (A Good Book full of Good Ideas)

Bottom Line: Professor Chediak has written an instruction manual for college as we know it.  Buy it.

May 1 was the day most students have decided on the college or university they will attend. The market for higher education is changing rapidly, the kids of these students will not have the same options. There will be fewer liberal arts colleges, but more unusual choices!

This is great news if you are at the college program CSMonitor called “the most revolutionary.” If not, then you probably are not getting one-on-one help with navigating the system from a professor. What to do?

Buy a good book.

If you know someone going to Conventional U, buy the kid a good book.If you are going, buy the book yourself.

Most students (or at least parents) are not ready to stop borrowing money or going to old State U yet, so there is a vital place for sound advice for living well in traditional colleges and universities. The world is changing, but higher education is very stodgy in structure, so for now the best advice book I have found is Thriving at College by engineering and physics professor Alex Chediak. Professor Chediak knows the old order, how to negotiate it, but also can help you avoid borrowing money.

He is the rare college prof who gets that things must change, but also knows how to thrive in the meantime. Take and read.

Let’s give a couple of detailed reasons why:

College is a huge investment of time and money. At least consider some steps that will help you make the most of school.

You are going to college. You can blame someone else if you do badly, but this will not do you any good. Don’t get the degree: people will assume you failed. That’s not fair, but so it goes. Professors grade us. Generally, Chediak says grades confirm calling, if I cannot do biochemistry, I should not be a doctor. That’s easy to say, hard to accept.

Yet it is the lack of sleep, a failure to eat well, or other obvious problems that cause many bright students to fail. Find out what the most common are, assume you could make those mistakes, and do not. Forewarned is forearmed. Forearmed is awesome: ask Wakanda.

Professors know the business side of school you do not know. Don’t get sold, get educated.

There are two parts to any school (even mine!): the part that is a business, which can be small with little clout or big and run everything, and the important part that is education. You want the education and need to figure out how to get around the business side. Chediak is your in print Obi Wan. Read and attend.

Here is an example:

A big school, Chediak notes, has hundreds of clubs. Many are designed as if you are on a cruise: keep you eating, drinking, numb, and happy.  Join an academic one or get an internship. This is sound advice. You are paying to be there so get the skills necessary to get paid for being at the next place you go. It is better to get paid than to pay.

Most students who waste the years in college do so for non-academic reasons. 

If you did well enough in high school, you can do well in college. If you chose wisely, you will have to work harder to do so, but not lose your social life. If you chose badly, then your face may not melt off from choosing the false grail, but you will find your McCollege easier than high school. (My advice: flee.)

Chediak addresses ways I have seen very gifted students waste a good college education. I wish he had been around when I was in school! More than one student, free from Evil Parents, stays up all night finishing the sand-box X-box game of his choice, only to waste a whole term. This is not wise.

Many students fail because they work too hard. Really. Chediak has seen it all and part of the all is the young adult who cannot stop “achieving.” This is no way to live and often it kills the joy of undergraduate education.

Read some Chediak.

Finally, for Christian students, being in a minority can be a good thing. Learn every new idea you can, but do not expect a global perspective from an American school. 

Chediak points out that dumping your faith for bad reasons is easy to do in college. He is a professor, so he is not afraid of ideas, just conformity to a mindless culture. College can be tricky because what is really conformity to the “elite” is sold as rebellion.

Of course, you must think and follow reason. Chediak just doesn’t want us to follow the madness of crowds.

Go buy the book.