9781580088565

YOURREALFRESHMAN ORIENTATION GUIDE After years of standardized tests, group projects, community service, and high school woes, you've finally made it to college. So, what now? Answering the all-too-familiar groan "I wish I'd knownthatas a freshman," a prof, a dean, and a recent grad distill more than fifty years of expertise at top colleges into this crash-course guide to success. Proving that it matters lesswhereyou go thanwhatyou accomplish while you're there, they reveal secrets that most undergrads learn the hard way (if at all), such as how to impress professors, live with roommates, select the best courses, plan your major, prepare for life in the real world, and more. College is a huge investment of time, money, and yourself.Getting the Best Out of Collegeis essential to making the most of that investment.

Peter D. Feaver (PhD, Harvard, 1990) is the Alexander F. Heh-meyer Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University. He has over twenty years of teaching experience–as a teaching fellow at Harvard and as a professor at Duke. He won the Harvard Certificate of Distinction in Teaching (1985—86 and 1986—87), the Trinity College (Duke) Distinguished Teaching Award (1994—95), and the Duke Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award (2001). He has published numerous scholarly books and articles on national security issues, and he has served on the National Security Council at the White House, first as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control under President Bill Clinton and most recently as Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and Institutional Reform under President George W. Bush. As long as his knees will let him, he can be found waddling up and down the basketball court–or more often these days, cheering his daughter and two sons from the sidelines.

Sue Wasiolek (more commonly known as Dean Sue) is assistant vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Duke University. She was premed at Duke (she never got into medical school), completed a Master’s of Health Administration at Duke (only worked in health care for eighteen months), completed her JD at North Carolina Central University and her LLM at Duke (only practiced law for nine months), and has been working at Duke for the past twenty-eight years. Sue loves the classroom both as a teacher (she teaches edu-cation law) and as a student (she plans to complete her EdD in 2008). Sue encourages students to study what they love and base their careers around what they love, even if those two are totally different things. Her time with students is not a job but a way of life. In her free time, Sue can be found jogging around Durham or working out at the gym with students.

Anne Crossman studied at both Stanford and Duke, earning a BA in English and a Certificate in Education. After teaching for public high schools, colleges, and the military for five years, she gave up her day job to pursue authorship and motherhood. A poet by trade, her work has been published in journals such as Nimrod and Margie, and she is currently finalizing a book of poems about Alzheimer’s disease entitled Trying to Remember, which is due to be published the summer of 2008. Her third book, a humorous educational series addressing life as a high-school student, is on deck and, if all goes well, will be hitting shelves by the end of the decade. Anne currently lives with her husband and sons in Seattle, Washington.

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
"You Expect Me to Live With a Stranger?": Managing Life in the Dorm	p. 1
Leaving Home, Phoning Home, and the First Trip Back to the Mother Ship: Maintaining Relationships Back Home	p. 30
"I Have the Perfect Schedule-All My Classes are on Wednesday!": Writing the Personal Narrative Called Your Transcript	p. 54
Alliances, Fellows, and Clubs, Oh My!: Engaging in Extracurriculars	p. 71
Memories You'll Want to Remember: Maneuvering the Social Scene with Aplomb	p. 93
What Professors Wish You Knew: Paying Attention to the Man (or Woman!) behind the Curtain	p. 123
Getting What You Came For: Studying Smarter (and Why It Shouldn't Be All That Hard)	p. 159
"I've Never Needed Help Before...": Navigating Campus Resources	p. 182
So What do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?: Choosing Your Major vs. Your Career	p. 199
It'll Be Over Before You Know It: Preparing for Life after College	p. 218
Index	p. 244
About the Authors	p. 248
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Introduction

Everybody knows that college is expensive--it doesn’t take a fancy degree to understand that. And yet somehow or another most people who are able to get into college find a way to pay for it. The premise of this book is that, as hard as it is to select and pay for college, most people figure that part out. The unexpectedly hard part--the part that in our opinion most people get wrong--is getting their money’s worth. Yes, paying tuition is a challenge. But making the most of that tuition is harder still.

As a prof, a dean, and a recent grad, we have advised thousands of students on how to get into the college they want and how to get out of college what they need. We have learned that few students (and even fewer parents) appreciate a fundamental secret: it matters less where students go than what they accomplish once they get there.

There are lots of books telling students how to get into the college they want and how to pay for it once they do. This is not one of those books. This book begins where they leave off.

Bright, eager students work unbelievably hard to get into college and are willing to shoulder an enormous financial burden along the way. Then, after that huge investment of time and money, those same students settle for a mediocre college experience. Some even graduate without the skills or glowing recommendations they need to succeed at the next level. Every spring we hear the graduate groan, “I wish I had known that as a freshman.” But, not you. This book is, in a way, an antidote to the uneven advising that afflicts most colleges--even the most prestigious ones.

Designed to help you start well and finish strong, this book is aimed at the incoming first-year student, beginning with the most common freshmen concerns about dorm life, leaving home, and deciding the fall schedule. But we guarantee that even seniors will find helpful tips as we discuss how to decide between the summer internship or paying job, how to balance the desire for an attractive GPA with a respectable course load, when and how to ask professors for that glowing recommendation (and how to actually earn one), and how to make memories as an undergrad that you’ll enjoy remembering. After decades of collective experience advising students, we have learned--and watched others learn--these lessons the hard way so that you don’t have to.

Since parents tend to believe the purpose of college is to gain an education, while students tend to see it as a rite of passage into adulthood that includes a few classes, we have built our chapters to appeal to both points of view. The chapters explore both curricular and extracurricular topics and are organized somewhat chronologically, based on how students will most likely encounter them, which enables them to be read at random or as a progression.

What qualifies us to help you get the best out of college is a distinctive blend of perspectives and a shared passion for making higher education worth the price tag. Peter Feaver has won two teaching awards as a professor of political science at Duke University. He is prominent in research and public policy—making circles in the area of American foreign policy, but he has written this book because some of his most rewarding experiences have been interacting with students inside and outside the classroom. Sue Wasiolek, assistant vice president for student affairs and dean of students at Duke University, is known as “Dean Sue”--a seasoned administrator who has been mentoring students and troubleshooting student life for twenty-eight years. She has regularly taught classes during that time but is best known on campus for her deep engagement with students in the extracurricular parts of their college experience. Anne Crossman, a recent Duke alumna, founded a student group as a freshman to mentor first-year students as they slalom through the college s

Excerpted from Getting the Best Out of College: A Professor, a Dean, and a Student Tell You How to Maximize Your Experience by Peter Feaver, Sue Wasiolek, Anne Crossman
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Getting the Best Out of College: A Professor, A Dean, And A Student Tell You How to Maximize Your Experience

Getting the Best Out of College: A Professor, A Dean, And A Student Tell You How to Maximize Your Experience

1580088562

Summary

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Table of Contents

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