They say college is the best time of your life. It can also be the scariest, and most confusing. Enter The Her Campus Guide to College Life: How to Manage Relationships, Stay Safe and Healthy, Handle Stress, and have the Best Years of Your Life. This book literally breaks down every part of college that your parents left you to figure out on your own.
It starts by calming everyone’s fears and walking the reader through ways to stay safe on campus. This section includes chapters on dorm safety, campus safety, sexual assault and study abroad. If that doesn’t grab your attention and keep you reading, we have more.
The next section is all about ways to stay healthy in college, especially since your mom won’t be there everyday to check up on you. Want to know how to avoid gaining weight? There’s a chapter dedicated to that. Do you suspect someone of having a mental health problem? There’s a chapter for that, too.
College is about building relationships and networking, and the third part of the book covers all the bases in that field. If you have any type of question about a roommate relationship, boyfriend, hook up, or even how to get to know your professor so you can go back to them for help, all of those answers are in this book.
St. Ambrose is a small campus, so students are bound to end up in charge of more than one extra-curricular activity on top of their school work. The fourth section is titled “Building a Balanced Social Life,” and provides solutions to all problems from Greek life to managing activities and academics.
The final section of the book is a great note to end on, because it talks about finances. We’ve all heard the phrase “poor, broke college student,” and quite frankly, it’s true. This part of the book provides information on how to find scholarships and pay for school, then sends readers on their way by providing tips for how to nail the interview and find a job.
Overall, Her Campus’ book is fun to read because the topic is relevant to all college students, no matter what their age. The pink headings throughout the chapter allow readers to pick and choose what they want to read about (even though the entire book is worth reading), and the pink boxes allow for readers to get the quick information. The end of the chapters are the best because they provide a checklist to see if you are on the right page and putting everything you just read into action. There is so much information in each chapter that the summaries at the end are perfect for debriefing any reader on what was said.
We may be biased, but coming from the perspective of current college students, this book is a clear 5 out of 5 stars.
If you are interested in purchasing a novel, go to www.hercampus.com/book for more information.