Table of Contents
Praise forREAL COLLEGE
If you read and use this book, your college journey will be much happier and more productive. Every student affairs office should recommend it.
Loren Pope, author of Colleges That Change Lives and Looking Beyond the Ivy League
Stone and Tippett address serious, substantive, and challenging issues with deep psychological wisdom. This book is superb must reading for any student on the brink of college life and any parent seeking an understanding of what college holds in store for their maturing daughters and sons.
Charles Ducey, Ph.D., Director, Bureau of Study Counsel, Harvards Center for Psychological and Learning Services
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DOUGLAS STONE worked for many years as a residential and academic advisor at Harvard College, and with students and administrators at The Citadel in South Carolina, on issues of communication, gender, and culture. A Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, he is coauthor of the best-selling Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, which has been translated into eighteen languages. Doug has taught and mediated in South Africa, Colombia, and Cyprus, and at the World Health Organization, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, Parents, Glamour, and Real Simple. He has also consulted to groups working on race relations, organ donation, gun control, and crisis counseling for survivors of rape and sexual assault. A partner at the corporate education firm Triad Consulting, Doug is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School. In his spare time, he plays basketball and writes supposedly funny screenplays. Doug can be reached at dstone@post.harvard.edu.
As a Harvard College student, ELIZABETH TIPPETT was the founding director of a mediation program designed to help students resolve roommate and other conflicts. For her senior thesis, she surveyed hundreds of college students in an effort to understand why and when they decide whether to seek help for mental health concerns. Through her work with the Harvard Negotiation Project, Liz served as a teaching assistant for Harvard Law Schools negotiation course, and developed the Projects forthcoming Web site, which documents its international peace-building activities over the last two decades. Liz is currently a Harvard Law School student. She spent last summer working for International Bridges to Justice, a human rights organization dedicated to improving legal services in China. She grew up in Beaumont, Alberta, Canada. Liz can be reached at tippett@post.harvard.edu.
TO OUR PARENTS,
Anne and Don Stone and Mitsu Oishi and Clay Tippett,
who taught us everything
Acknowledgments
First, a huge thanks to all the college students weve worked with over the yearsfor all the challenges weve faced and victories weve shared, and all that we learned together. This book comes mostly from our experiences with you.
It was while working with our friend Elizabeth Kopelman Borgwart on a project to help college roommates manage their differences that many of the ideas in this book first began to take shape. Now a professor of history, Liz is the very model of what it means to truly care about your students. She inspires us all.
Our colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation ProjectRoger Fisher, Linda Kluz, and Daniel Shapirowere an endless source of ideas and feedback, cheerfully absorbing our whining and complaints while offering only encouragement and optimism in return.
We owe a great debt to Charlie Ducey, Director of Harvards Bureau of Study Counsel for his wise guidance, and to his colleagues. Over the years, the Bureau has advised and assisted thousands of students with their most difficult challenges, and has taken the lead in figuring out what really helps. A special thanks to Ariel Phillips, also of the Bureau, who taught us the importance of listening first when someone is in trouble; and to Michael Hoyt, Richard Kadison, and their extraordinary colleagues at the University Health Services.
During Dougs seven years as an academic and residential advisor, the Freshman Deans Office at Harvard College was like a second home. Doug fondly recalls many formative conversations with his mentor Hank Moses (former Dean of Freshman and currently Headmaster at the Trinity School in New York), Dean Ibby Studley Nathans, Karen Heath, Ginger MacKay-Smith, Lisa Harris, and the late Burris Young. Hanks outstanding book Inside College: New Freedom, New Responsibility is elegantly written, packed with helpful advice, and well worth tracking down.
We also wish to acknowledge our dear friend and colleague, the late Archie Epps, former Dean of Students at Harvard College. Archie, your spirit enlivens this book, and you are deeply missed.
Thanks to cofounders of the Harvard Conflict Resource Center, Naomi Coquillon and Travis Batty, as well as the many other diligent friends, colleagues, and administrators who got the program off the ground.
With deep gratitude for your time, energy, and wisdom, we acknowledge those friends and colleagues who read draft chapters and offered feedback. We were going to write a page about each of you, but one of you advised that names were enough: Christina Araiza, Ashley Bauman, Wynn Calder, Sylvie Carr, Tracy Anne Chung, Naomi Coquillon, Ben Edelman, Chris Edmonds-Waters, Robin Ely, Travis Good, Elizabeth Greene, Alpana Gupta, Louisa Hackett, Joyce Heen, Holly Holloway, Sarah Hurwitz, Onyi Iweala, Jeffrey Kerr, Jessie Kerr, Agnes Li, Mike Melcer, Erica Michelstein, Jackie Parker, Alan Price, Michael Riera, Don Rubenstein, Katelyn Rubenstein, Gabriella Salvatore, Jody Scheier, Roman Sokolowski, Karen Tenenbaum, Jen Thompson, Nancy Tran, Graeme Truelove, Erin Wallace, Joe Wolfe, Marie Wolfe, and Jim Young. Maybe one day well have a party so you can all meet each other.
A special shout-out to our friends who came to Matt and Luannes cookout last Augustyes, Bloss and Faulks, you tooand for the book titles that were generated there, including obvious winners like And Now We Are Freshmen and I Miss My Mommy and My Roommate Smells Like Ass.
Our pal Michael Mah deserves credit for introducing us to the concept of the dreaded J Curve cited in the Studying chapter; props to Debbie Goldstein, whiz-bang writer and all-around puncher upper, for adding needed spice to the chapter on Relationships; and thanks to Gina Scaramella, Executive Director of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, for her expert advice on the material on rape and sexual assault.
Uber-agent and friend Esther Newberg, along with her colleagues at ICM, did a great job in helping to nurture this book along, and for that we say, Go Huskies! Our editors at Penguin, Jane von Mehren and Jennifer Ehmann, did more work on this book than we or they had any reason to anticipate. But the book is a thousand times better for it, even if we still chose on occasion to start a sentence with but, and use the third person they and them, etc., to refer to indefinite singular antecedents as a way to maintain gender neutrality. Thank you for your sure-handed editing and patient guidance, and most of all, thank you for challenging us. Please, no more push-ups.
Thanks to our siblings: Lizs twin brother and best bud, Ben Tippett, whose finest contributions to the book were felled by the ax of good taste; and Dougs siblings, Randy Stone, Robbie Blackett, and Julie Dohertya funnier, more loving trio no brother has ever had.
