Hey Everyone!
Well, tomorrow I am starting my first semester at community college. As you know, my last semester was a bust and caused me to withdraw from all of my classes. Through trial and error, I hope to get it right this time!
As a result of my college return, I will only be active on this blog during the weekends. That means no new posts or email responses. Until then, I hope you will enjoy my plethora of previous posts and this new post.
My new post will definitely give you some ambition to succeed this semester. It's a book that I personally own and have reviewed on amazon.com. It is called: "How to Become a Straight-A Student" by Cal Newport
The Backstory: Cal Newport graduated from Dartmouth College, a member of the Ivy league, in 2004 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. Phi Beta Kappa is the 4 year institution counterpart to Phi Theta Kappa, which I described in detail in my previous post. More or less, Phi Beta Kappa represents students at 4 year institutions with the highest GPA's.
How Cal Wrote the Book: After a freshman year of trial and error, trying to discover the best techniques for getting Straight-A's, he wound up with 36 straight-A's in a row between his sophomore and senior years. After being inducted in Phi Beta Kappa, Cal wanted to discover how the other students who were inducted studied to earn stellar grades. So he sent out surveys to fellow students. Eventually, he got some responses from Straight-A students from 4 year institutions across the country, including Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Cornell, Skidmore, Columbia, University of Arizona, University of Virginia, and many more. With these responses, he wrote the book
Why this Book stands out from the rest: Unlike other books that are written by knowledge experts who haven't been to college in a long time, these study habits are culled from numerous straight-A students who know these methods are time tested and they just plain work
My Review that I wrote on Amazon.com:
"The ONLY real college success book that lives up to its title!"
For perhaps the first time in my life, I finally found a book that truly lives up to its title. Personally, I dont review many books, but I just had to let everyone know that this book is AMAZING!
Well...maybe i'm getting ahead of myself. You should also check out his other book too!
I've read a few other books on college. However, they were bloated with too many pages, a boring writing style that failed to capture my attention, and were generally repeating common sense that students have heard way too many times.
However, what sets this book apart is that, unlike 99% of college success books, the advice isn't biased. It doesn't involve one person's experience (Though graduating from dartmouth "summa cum laude" doesn't hurt), but instead from fellow straight-a students. In fact, it isn't even written by a professor! The great part about this is that, although not every last tip will apply to everyone, it gives you a good pool to work with when formulating methods to get ahead in college. Personally, I found 95% of the stuff applicable to me.
That being said, I found this book to be helpful because it follows the simple phrase: "Study smarter, not harder". Even with this simple phrase in mind, everything branches out to include often surprising "secrets" that WILL improve your college experience. Although much of it is common sense, Cal describes it in such a manner so that you can easily understand it, why it is important, and become inspired right away! Cal also writes very well that I found it very hard just to put the book down! He writes in such a manner like he is an older sibling who is passing on his knowledge to his younger brother or sister. Its really funny and definitely a far cry from those monotonous "college success" guides that are written by so-called "experts", far removed from their own college experience.
Even then, this book more than delivers on its title. Although good grades in college are no doubt important, college is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that is full of new experiences waiting to be discovered. With this in mind, Cal proves to the reader that good grades is not the entire point of college. He defeats this common mindset by telling the reader to keep a good balance that were used by the straight-A students he interviewed. He used the phrase "star students" to describe them. These were people who actually HAD a life outside of the classroom: They had stellar grades, good friends, and were immersed in extracurricular activities. In essence, these students wanted to "stand out" right from the beginning. This piece of advice will definitely be hard to come by with other books. A's B's and C's are NOT the "currency" of academia.
An important thing to remember is that this book is more in depth than his previous book. Even so, i'd buy BOTH books!
If you are skeptical like I was at first, do two things:
1. Read the introduction.
2. Check out Cal's blog on college success. Its updated frequently: http://calnewport.com/blog/
Good luck and have fun!
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