40 essays from top millennial writers on how they survived their first years out of college—a book conceived and promoted by a groundbreaking crowdsourcing startup.

Freshman Year of Life tells the truth about life after college graduation. But this isn’t your standard step-by-step guide to landing that interview or surviving a long distance breakup with your college sweetheart, though there are stories on both these topics. Freshman Year of Life is a collection of essays from top millennial voices that have been there before, wish they’d known some things they didn’t, but made it through all the same. This is not your mother’s first year out of college book, but a starker more inclusive portrayal of what it’s like to be out of school for people from all walks of life. These are the people recent grads turn to on the Internet to offer poignant witty advice or sly one liners about pop culture and politics, and these are the personal stories their social media followers and fans haven’t heard. This anthology is full of advice, insights, and anecdotes from 40 millennial role models’ lives, the real stories that show just how disillusioning, hilariously embarrassing, and self-revelatory the transition to the adult world can be. Readers will delight in the honest and down to earth tone these authors take when looking back on their first years out of college, and will find it easier to tackle adulthood on their own because of it.

The essays in this book are written by bloggers, social media gurus, journalists, TV personalities, and podcast hosts, with a total Twitter following of over 2 million. Contributors include Ashley Ford, Emily Gould, Mychal Denzel Smith, Bijan Stephen, and Mara Wilson. Others have written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, BuzzFeed, The Washington Post, Elle, The Guardian, Feministing, appeared on Showtime and VH1, started their own successful businesses and websites, and hosted popular podcasts.

The idea for this book was conceived of by Mindsumo, Inc., a community of today’s brightest college students. Founded in 2011, the MindSumo community harnesses the creativity and analytical skills of students to produce some of the most innovative and forward thinking solutions to the challenges businesses face today. The company was launched at the Stanford Student Startup Association in February 2012 and is backed by some of the top investors in Silicon Valley, including Voyager Capital, Google Ventures, Data Collective, and StartFund. Clients include Target, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Yahoo, Kayak, and IBM to name a few.