The Snarktastic Guide to College Success

What if you didn’t have to force students to read their college success textbook? The Snarktastic Guide to College Success takes an alternative approach as “the unvarnished, usually-said-behind-your-back truth about what really matters, straight from college students, alums, faculty, staff, and administrators.” And that’s exactly what you’ll find. So go ahead, assign it — and marvel as students actually read it.

This alternative approach to college success strategies focuses on presenting information in a different tone. In terms of information, this is the sort of advice that students used to have to get from older and wiser fellow students, from TAs feeling exceptionally generous one day after class, or from (horrors!) figuring it out themselves. The trouble with learning these lessons on your own is that by the time you figure it out, you’ve either nearly or already graduated. This book allows incoming students to ‘figure it out’ in time to put it to use. And the alternative tone – the ‘snark’ in Snarktastic – is what makes all that wholesome, mentally nutritious information go down easy, like the chocolate coating on a granola bar. The Snarktastic Guide to College Success recognizes most students respond well to a humorous, informed style, like the The Onion (http://www.theonion.com) of textbooks, if you will. Funny, irreverent, honest, and chock-full of useful stuff. It’s all here, from choosing a seat on the first day of class to how paying attention to who’s wearing backpacks can save a lot of grief. And that only scratches the snarky surface...!  

Sandra Mizumoto Posey works to bring out the best in every student.  Why?  Because once upon a time, she was a failing student and high school dropout.  Eventually she turned it all around and went on to graduate from Cal State Long Beach with honors, then earned her Masters and Ph.D. in Folklore from UCLA.  Yes, she knows that is the most useless degree you can possibly get. As her friend’s mom once said, “Good school, bad major.”  Still, it’s served her well.  She’s Director of Learning Communities and First Year Success at Metropolitan State University of Denver where she is also an Associate Professor of Women’s Studies.  Prior to that, she was Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary General Education and Interim Director of the Center for Community Service-Learning at California State Polytechnic University Pomona. There she earned tenure, something she is now so fond of, she takes it wherever she goes, like her yorkie.  She has taught at the college level for over a dozen years, mostly to freshmen, a term she can’t use because it’s too gender-biased.  After all, she is a Women’s Studies professor.  She prefers “first year student” even though it doesn’t roll off the tongue.  When things do roll off the tongue she’s actually pretty funny.  Don’t tell her I said so.  Feminists are scary.

Teague von Bohlen enjoys sharing the title “professor” with his colleagues Plum, Dumbledore, Xavier, and Flutesnoot. He’s won several awards for his teaching, starting with several student-service prizes from his Creative Writing MFA alma mater Arizona State University, and two faculty excellence in teaching awards from the University of Colorado Denver, where he currently teaches fiction and serves as primary advisor to the student newspaper The Advocate. He’s freelanced (which too many people think he actually does for free) for magazines such as Westword and Village Voice Media, serving as everything from pop-culture critic to political commentator to humorist. (The humor part is, to be fair, a matter of opinion.) His first novel, The Pull of the Earth, won the Colorado Book Award for Fiction in 2007. His short fiction has been seen in magazines and journals, most recently South Dakota Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Superstition Review, Waccamaw Review, and many other publications that end with the word “Review.” He’s currently working on a collection of flash fiction and a second novel, mainly because he likes the irony of writing both very long things and very short things at the same time. He’s very tall, loves comic books, and is extremely proud to have never seen an episode of Jersey Shore.

Foreword, Forewarned

Section One: Before Class

1. Picking Your College and Picking Your Battles

Nancy Williams Parks

2. Cutting the Academic Umbilical: Preparing Your Parents for Your College Experience

Randy Hyman

3. Be Good to the Gatekeeper: Please Don't Call Us Secretaries

Leslie Bailey

4. Beyond the Chili Pepper: Scheduling Classes and Picking Your Professors

Eileen Wallis

5. Oh the Humanities: A Defense of the Well-Rounded Education

Teague von Bohlen

6. Debt and U

Antone Minard

7. Between Boredom and Terror: Six Steps to Financial Aid Solvency

Nathan Rudibaugh

8. Why Choosing a Major for Stupid Reasons Might Be a Very Smart Thing to Do

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

9. Why Professors Want to Help You: Your Professor May Have Been a Loser Too

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

10. Why Professors Want to Help You, Part 2,

Teague von Bohlen

Section Two: In Class, With Class

11. Choose Your Seat Wisely: The Strategy of Sitting Well in the Classroom

Teague von Bohlen

12. Can I Sit Next To That Chick in the Burka?: Diversity in College Life

Heather Joseph-Witham

13. Get on the SyllaBus

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

14. TXT L8R

Teshia Young Roby

15. How Pretending to be Interested is Good for Everyone

Victoria Simmons

16. ProcrastiNation, How Not to be a Citizen

John  A. Lanning and  Sandra Mizumoto Posey

17. Yes, We Can All See You Doing That

Teague von Bohlen

18. The Bad Question

Kevin Haworth

19. Bring Me Your Tired, Your Hungry, Your Mediocre, Yearning for Grade "C"

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

20 The 'Do-I-Know-You' Grade

Teshia Young Roby

21. B.S. Is a Path to Truth

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

22. Good Writers Steal, But Not Like That

Sandra Posey and Teague von Bohlen

Section Three: Beyond Class

23. Will Work For Free: Campus Publications and You

Patricia Murphy

24. No Way…Pay Me

Bryan Smith

25. To Friend or Not to Friend: Social Networking and Your Professors

Patricia Murphy

26. Choose Your Own Adventure: Taking Advantage of Student Travel

Mindy Bezdek

27. Learning to Walk: What You Need to Know About Graduation Ceremonies

Teague von Bohlen

28. What You'll Need to Know From Day One of College to Get into Grad School

Sandra Mizumoto Posey

29. Get a Job! No, Scratch That Get a Career

Bridgette Coble

Section Four: Student Perspectives

30. Picking a Major (Without Kicking Yourself Later)

Daniel Alvarez

31. Tasting the Rainbow, One Friend at a Time

Megan Fowler

32. Roommates: The World is Not Your Toilet

Adam Steininger

33. Why Taking Erotic Notes is the Best Way to Remember Everything

Thorin Klosowski

34. Snark and Consequence: Lessons a Protest Taught Me

Jef Otte

35. The Truth About Your Professor: Lessons Learned from Hard Experience

Tasha Ringo

36. Make Sure They Have Backpacks (and Other Rules for Surviving Freshman Year)

Gellilla Gebre-Michael

Afterword: Sunscreen for the 21st Century

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