An alternative approach to college admissions, focused more on self-knowledge than tests, essays, and recommendations.
A college counselor advises students on a more mindful approach to choosing a college and career.
In this debut, Fisher draws on nearly two decades of work as a counselor to indict the college admissions industry and encourage students to set and achieve goals unhindered by the current system’s constraints. She writes that “not nearly enough students have any ‘particular purpose’ beyond seeking admission when they complete their applications,” so she offers a series of exercises to help them determine their interests, values, and strengths in order to move beyond simply getting into college. The book’s opening chapters explore what she calls the “Culture of Crazy”—an atmosphere of achievement and credentialism designed to secure admission to selective colleges. After encouraging students to understand the nature of the system, Fisher urges them to challenge their assumptions and adapt, offering guidance on shifting one’s “mental models,” employing “design thinking,” and taking a mindful approach to goal-setting. Each chapter includes exercises designed to help readers understand and shape their ideas on life goals, changing interests, and intrinsic motivation, among other topics. Although the book’s intended audience includes high-achieving students and their parents, Fisher asks them to consider that alternative paths, such as community colleges, foreign universities, or unschooling, may be a better fit for them. She reminds readers at several points that her book is not a guide to the mechanics of applying to college, although it does include a list of resources for doing so at the end. Readers looking for a more holistic approach to the question of higher education will find this book a useful tool. However, it’s limited by the fact that although it offers “an inspired way to think about and approach the act of applying,” it can’t change the existing structure in which one submits those applications. Fisher’s writing is clear and coherent, though, and the book’s organization makes it easy for readers to follow all its steps or to focus on the most relevant ones. Its guidance will be useful to those pursuing an unconventional path after high school, but many who are planning a traditional college career may find it valuable as well.
An alternative approach to college admissions, focused more on self-knowledge than tests, essays, and recommendations.Pub Date: March 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943425-08-2
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Elevate
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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