Peter Feaver - Getting the Best Out of College, Revised and Updated: Insider Advice for Success from a Professor, a Dean, and a Recent Grad

Copyright 2008, 2012 by Peter Feaver, Sue Wasiolek, and Anne Crossman

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

A previous edition was published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, in 2008.

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Feaver, Peter.
Getting the best out of college, revised and updated : insider advice for success from a professor, a dean, and a recent grad / Peter Feaver, Sue Wasiolek, Anne Crossman. 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A guide to optimizing all aspects of the undergraduate college experience, written for students by a professor, a dean, and a recent college graduate Provided by publisher.
1. College student orientationUnited States. I. Wasiolek, Sue. II. Crossman, Anne. III. Title.
LB2343.32.F434 2012
378.198dc23
2011051246

eISBN: 978-0-307-78880-1

v3.1

Writing this book has been an adventure all its own. Peter and Sue toyed with the idea of writing a book for nearly a decade, advancing it by baby steps because most conversations took place at the gym or loud college functions. It was not until indefatigable Anne joined the merry band as a recent grad that we got this book steadily under way.

That being said, we could not have written the book without the countless students, faculty, and administrators who, over the years, have shared with us their lessons learned the hard way. Some will easily find themselves in the anecdotes we have included; others will have to look a bit harder, but we assure you that youre herein the stories, in the counsel, and in our most sincere gratitude.

We eagerly thank all those who read the draft manuscript, in whole or in part, and gave us the kind of trenchant feedback we needed. We especially thank Dorothy Lou Bailey, Andrea Beschel, Lauren Betz, Autumn Bonner, Nick Bonner, Tanvi Buch, Hans Buder, Barbara Carlson, Josh Crossman, Lisa Disbrow, Rebecca Duckworth, Brian Fawcett, John Feaver, Ruth Feaver, Carol Fidler, Joshua Foromera, Helen Giles, Arunabha Guha, Onome Ofoman, David Selinger, Philip Whisenhunt, Beth Whitehead, Billy Zarzour, and John Zink.

Thank you to Sheila Curran, who led us to the good people of Ten Speed Press, and to the Crown Publishing Group for encouraging us to pursue a second edition. We are also immensely grateful to Emily Timberlake, our editor, for taking our book to a new level of excellence, and for Jean Blomquist and Molly Woodward, who scrubbed the manuscript shiny bright.

Above all, we would like to thank our families, who were supportive, patient, and long-suffering through this process. A special thanks to Karen, who too many nights caught Peter sending furtive emails of chapter drafts after hed already spent a long, hard day at the White House, and to Josh for giving up countless weekends of kayaking to stay home with the kids so Anne could warm a seat at the public library.

Coaches dont win games, players do. But good coaching can help players win. The right coaching can help a player go to the next level. And bad coaching can lead a good player far away from success.

That, at least, is how I approach my job, and that is how this book approaches college. This book aims to coach students toward academic and personal success at the collegiate level. The authors are my Duke colleagues, and among them they have many decades of experience helping students make the most of the natural talents and the opportunities which life has presented them.

This book does not guarantee success any more than I could draw up an Xs-and-Os play that guarantees a game-winning basket. Players still have to execute that play when the whistle blows, and students still have to apply the advice to their own personal situations. But if you read this book and take the counsel it offers seriously, you will be better prepared for success.

In my world, there are lots of ways a team can get off track, especially in a long season of competition. An important part of my job is to help my athletes avoid those pitfalls and to identify the best ways to navigate to a successful conclusion.

That is what this book does for any student who reads and applies it. The premise of this book is that anyone reading it has already mastered one part of the collegiate experience: picking a college and getting in. That, however, is the easy part.

Based on their extensive experience working with students, the authors argue that the choice of college is less important than all the choices you make once you are in college. You can go to an elite school and get a lousy education if you make a lot of bad choices. You can go to a less well-known school and come out with a superior education, if you take full advantage of what that school has to offer. (Come to think of it, there may be a basketball analogy here, too: everyone knows that a Cinderella team can make a run if they face a major program that doesnt take each game seriously.)

Things were a bit simpler for me when I went to college. I was fortunate to go to a great school, the US Military Academy at West Point, and one of its many strengths was that it provided students with an exceptionally regimented system of dos and donts, especially back then.