College Parent Central Podcast

#112 – Our Favorite Summer Reads

• Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams • Season 5 • Episode 112

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This episode is sort-of an encore episode. Each year we do an episode where we share some of our favorite – and helpful – books for college parents. This year, we realized that many of the books that we’ve talked about over the past four years are still ones we recommend. So we’ve pulled together seven of our suggestions from past years and put them together in this episode. These books are truly some of our top recommendations. Happy listening – and then happy reading!

Thank you for listening!

Speaker 1:

Hi podcast listeners. We're sharing another Encore episode, but this one is a little different. Each year, we do a Summer Reads episode, where we share some of our favorite and helpful books for college parents. This year, we realized that many of the books that we've talked about in the past are still ones we recommend. So what we did this year is pull together some of our suggestions and reviews from past years and put them together in this episode. They're truly some of our top recommendations. We hope you find these helpful. Happy reading.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You'll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts, vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams, as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.

Speaker 3:

Oh, today is one of our favorite kind of podcasts. We are talking about our favorite reads. We're talking about books that we would like to recommend to you all for your summer reads, your sitting by the beach reading, maybe and these are favorite books of ours. Vicki and I have such a good opportunity in doing this podcast to read all sorts of good stuff out there. We are picking our best to talk to you about today.

Speaker 3:

My next book has been written for both parents one version for parents and one version for students. It's called the Naked Roommate, and the one I would like to talk about is for parents only, but this book has been one of my favorites for years, and it's because harlan cohen is is the writer, and he addresses the issues of parenting college students with such humor and such. It's really entertaining, but at the same time, it's filled with lots of information that's really useful. The original story that it sits on is a hilarious story about a student going to college and finding out that his roommate is a nudist, hence the title the Naked Roommate and I'm not going to talk more about that. It's a hypothetical story.

Speaker 3:

It is a hypothetical and it has to do with the general thing of dealing with students, with people who are different from you. But he presents this in a really humorous way and actually Vicki and I had the opportunity some years ago to be at a conference and hear him present it. I remember with his guitar he sang. And it was just fabulous. So this is a book that you would want to read as parents, and you would also want to get the copy that is written for students and hand this to your kids.

Speaker 1:

It is really worth reading, yeah, and they'll read it because it's fun but has lots of really good advice in it too, yeah, yeah. The second book I wanted to talk about is a book called there is Life After College, and it was written by Jeff Salingo, who is a writer for the Washington Post and has written for the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education. So he is a writer, and the problem I have with this book there is Life After College is the title I have with this book. There is Life After College is the title, because it sounds as though it's a book of advice for after graduation. It sounds as though it's something, oh, I should give perhaps to my graduating college senior, and this is a book that is really, I think, easily shared by parents and students. So I would recommend it to parents and then I would say when you're done with it, pass it along to your student. So the problem with the title is that it sounds like it's for after college, but the subtitle helps. So it's there is life after college what parents and students should know about navigating school to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. So, really, the book what you do in college is more'm here that's going to get me ready for that career afterward. For college students he says to thrive in your career, don't treat college or your job as a spectator sport. And I love that analogy because again, we've seen lots of students who really do seem to think you know, I'm here to kind of see it all happen but that it really is important to put in the work and to do certain things to benefit yourself.

Speaker 1:

Parents should read the book to think about students' strengths and challenges. You know that what are challenges for our students today are very different than what the challenges were for us. Some of us went to college, but college is a very different place and some of us did not go to college. So you know, really thinking about your students' strengths and how they are going to face challenges, which is something you and I talk about all the time, and we focus sometimes on those challenges and not always on the strengths. And I think the book helps to sort of see the thread of preparation that runs from high school through college to early career, that there are certain things that are going to really provide benefit. So this is a good book, whether you have a student who is in high school or college or just out for parents to read and then share with your student.

Speaker 1:

Okay, my next one is it's called your Freshman is Off to College, but when you see the title printed on the book, it actually says your baby, and then that's crossed out and then it says freshman has gone to college. Because when we send our kids away to college, they're still our babies, college they're still our babies. And this is by Lori Hazard and Stephanie Carter, who are assistant dean and director of academic center at Bryant College in Rhode Island. So they're you know, they've seen lots of freshmen come and go through. This is for parents. This is not one. There's nothing wrong with sharing it with your student, but it's aimed more at parents. There's nothing wrong with sharing it with your student, but it's aimed more at parents.

Speaker 1:

And it's a fun approach because it's a month by month guide, which I think is helpful because what's going on in September is very different than what's happening in February for your college student. But it compares everything to what was happening when our babies were little and you know they go through toddlerhood and they go through you know all of these things. So there's this sort of extended analogy comparing the first year of college to those early parenting years and it really sort of gets to the heart of what this first year transition is like. But it also, I think, puts all of these experiences in perspective a little bit for parents. But it also, I think, puts all of these experiences in perspective a little bit for parents because I know, you know, when I had a new baby and an infant, you know everything was a crisis and my friends who were more experienced, who had older children, or you know my mother, you know, who had lived through it with me, had a little bit more relaxed view for some of these things.

Speaker 1:

So it really puts things in perspective and each chapter begins with an interesting imaginary letter that the college student might be writing home to the parents and it helps parents kind of imagine what might be going on for their student during this time. You know September's letter, october's letter, november's letter. So through these letters and then addressing some of the things that were talked about in these imaginary letters, parents learn, you know, a lot of the same things you were talking about in the Off to College book, about the resources that are available, about what life at college is like at this time in that first year and suggestions for parents on how to encourage responsibility and encourage their student to take ownership of their experiences. So it's a fun approach that gives you some real perspective into that first year transition for college students.

Speaker 3:

The name of the book that I'm recommending is called Children who Fail at School but Succeed at Life Lessons from Lives Well-Lived. It's a book by Mark Katz written in 2016. Mark Katz is a clinical psychologist. I picked this book because it is what I do every day. I work with students who have struggled in school and yet, when they get through, and when I see them in internships, and when they get their jobs, when they leave, they're often very, very successful. So they do well outside of school, even though they've struggled. And so I think if you are a parent of a student who has had some difficulties in school, this is definitely your book.

Speaker 3:

Mark Katz draws on his experience being the director of a learning development services clinic. It's an educational, psychological, psychological, neuropsych Center in San Diego, california. He takes one student who struggled in school, talks about this person as an adult. He's 48 years old, runs a small business and goes back and forth between his years in school, where he struggled, and his incredible success outside of school, because he could draw on his strengths when he was working. You know, in school he had a learning disability. He was dyslexic. He had trouble reading. Dyslexic, he had trouble reading. When he got out of school he could draw on his creative problem solving his intellect, his, you know. He knew where to go for help. He knew when to go for help. A lot of my students, I find, are very resourceful and very resilient because of the experiences they've gone through in school.

Speaker 3:

This book, I have to say, leans a little academic. I'm not sure your kids will want to read it. They may want to listen to it. I think our kids need to hear these stories about successful adults. And if you're interested in this, it's just a fabulous read. You know it's. It's not. It's it's. It doesn't have a. You know it's. It doesn't have one of those plots that keep you holding, but but it's got really, really good stuff. Well worth the read.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk about two. I want to talk about them together because I think they're excellent companion books. You know, if you head to the beach this summer you're going to go with a huge bag of all of these books. But these are two books that I'm really very excited about. They're some of the best and they're really particularly of interest for high school parents. So if you're already a college parent, sure you might be interested in them, but please pass the information on to someone that you know who's a high school parent.

Speaker 1:

So the first one is by Jeffrey Salingo, who's an award-winning journalist. He spent two decades reporting on higher education and he wrote a book that I talked about, I think, when we did our summer read podcast a couple of years ago. We'll link to that in the show notes. His first book it was there is Life After College what Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow. Now, that's one for college parents. So if you just listen to me start and say this is for high school parents, if you haven't read Salingo's first book, you want to go back and read that and we'll link to it in the show notes. But his new book is called who Gets In and why.

Speaker 1:

A Year Inside College Admissions. So you can see why it's for high school parents and it is really a perspective-altering book. I mean, you read it and you just look at the whole admissions process completely differently. It helps families understand how the admissions process works, and especially at the more selective schools, but not exclusively. Really, you understand a lot about how admissions works. It's a must read for that.

Speaker 1:

What Jeffrey Salingo did was spend a year inside the admissions office. He found three I think it's three schools that allowed him. He embedded himself in their admissions offices and spent time with them. He interviewed students who were applying to college. He interviewed high school counselors who were pointing students toward college. He interviewed admissions personnel and then he sat in the room while the decisions were being made and watched how it happened, listened to the discussions that admissions counselors have, and it's really an eye-opening book.

Speaker 1:

He's an excellent writer. So there are twists and turns along the way. I mean, lynn, you just said the book you talked about isn't necessarily a page turner. I found this was somewhat a page turner because I wanted to find out what's going to happen to that student. Is that student going to get in? Is that student not to get in? So you really you know it's a good read, but it also is a ton of information.

Speaker 1:

And he talks about schools as buyers and sellers, which is really an interesting concept. And the buyers are the you know the schools that need to get out there and recruit, that want to get people to apply. The sellers are the schools the Harvards and the Yales, and they don't have to do anything except exist and they get thousands and thousands and thousands of applications and they're highly, highly selective. So one of the things the book does is to reassure everyone that there are plenty of schools out there that are buyers. That are the ones that you know you need to expand your thinking and your searching that there are a lot of good schools out there for everybody.

Speaker 1:

And one of the things he talks about in the appendix that helps you think about the process is he says there are four areas to focus on and I'll just give you those. He says worry about what you do in high school and a little less about standardized tests. We focus all the time on testing, and that's changing now that so many schools are going test optional. And then he says make the initial college list about your needs and fuss with the names later. Don't get caught up in the big names. Think about each application individually rather than all of them collectively. Where are you applying and what do you want to tell that particular school about yourself? And finally, focus on what fits rather than how good the sticker looks, on the task of producing a class that's good for the business. So if you apply to a really selective school, the odds are that you're going to get rejected, but that if you do, it's not because of your qualities. It's because of what that college needed at that moment and that, in spite of what we're told today about how hard it is to get into college, there are lots of great schools out there that would welcome your student and that might actually be a better match.

Speaker 1:

So I would say parents and students both need to read this book and then they need to talk about it as they're in the admissions process. It's so good and so important and he's such a good writer that sounds fabulous. It is. It really is a good read.

Speaker 1:

The second book is a great companion piece because it is all. It is in part, about the admissions process, but it's also about the money, and this is going to be more of a parent book, probably than students, but for parents to read and then talk about it with their students. So the book is called the Price you Pay for College an entirely new roadmap for the biggest financial decision your family will ever make. And it is and it's by Ron Lieber, who was the author of a book called the Opposite of Spoiled, and he is the your Money columnist for the New York Times, and he has been doing that since 2008. Has all kinds of honors in business journalism, so he's coming at this from a financial aspect. But it's about a whole lot more than the money. I've been working in higher ed for a lot, a lot, a lot of years.

Speaker 2:

No numbers.

Speaker 1:

And I put three daughters through college and when I read this book last year I learned about the complexities and inner workings of admissions and financial aid in a way I never understood, and I think if this book had been out there when we were going through the college process it might have entirely changed the way that our family approached admission and tuition. Everybody should read this book. What it's not? It's not a book of quick tips and hacks for financing your education. That information is in there, but it's in the depth of the bigger conversation. Planning for costs of college begins, lieber says, by defining what success means to you and your family and exploring values, and that sometimes that's uncomfortable work, and so we don't. You know we think of the money piece as entirely separate from admissions and from college success, and what Lieber does is weave it all together, that it really is all part of the same thing. It has all kinds of details that you don't usually expect to find in a financial book, but once you read them you say yes, of course that makes sense. That's tied into financing. It's not just about the number crunching but about the human side. The title is the Price you Pay for College, and sometimes that price is more than monetary. He talks about emotions, such as guilt and fear and shame, that lie behind how we finance and how we feel about what we're able to do for our kids and all of that, and how we feel about what we're able to do for our kids and all of that One of the things that's really helpful he weaves throughout the whole book questions for you to ask admissions offices, to ask colleges that are going to help you make the decision of whether this college is worth the price that you're going to pay, things that you don't normally think of with financing. What will your professors do here to make my child's life harder, not easier. Harder that's what you're paying for really, so that they can grow Asking colleges about the percentage of time that students spend in classes with more than 50 or 100 people in them is going to tell you a lot.

Speaker 1:

Talking to tour guides and saying tell me the biggest clash of ideas you've witnessed inside the classroom, tell me when was the last time you changed your mind about something important? As a result of your academic experience, you know all of these kinds of things. For community, if you're looking at a community college, what percent of students go on to a bachelor's degree in four years. And if students transfer, where do they transfer? To these all? Really, the bottom line is the financing, but they're part of bigger questions. So if you read this book and you should you probably will come away being able to pay less. But I think more importantly, you come away understanding where the price you are paying is going and why you're willing to pay that, and the whole process just becomes much more transparent. So Jeff Salingo's book who Gets In and why? Ron Lieber's book the Price you Pay for College read them together.

Speaker 3:

Read them if you have a high school student. So the first one is a book that I've actually talked about before, but this is the third edition of this book. It's a brand new edition. The book is called Seven Steps to College Success A Pathway for Students with Disabilities. Well, this is my world, so I really love this book, and every time I mention it I say it's the book that I wish I had written.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to interrupt you and it's by Elizabeth Hamlet, and we have two interviews with her and our most recent interview, if you go back just a little bit, was number 85. And she talks all about the book there. So you talk, but you can also then follow up and actually listen to her.

Speaker 3:

So Elizabeth Hamlet has worked with learning disability students in colleges for over 20 years. She works in a disability services office and she's a speaker and people ask her to come and talk about this topic because she's really an expert. I like the third edition because it's up there, updated research, updated interviews and it's well done. You know, it's a practical guide for students about the differences between high school and college when you have learning differences or disabilities, so it helps you know the process on finding the right college, finding accessing accommodations, how parents can support you in that process. I think this should be required reading for all families and their students in high school, students who want to go to college but need to know the process and the differences when you have learning differences, because you need to take a lot more responsibility and this book just lays it out. It's beautiful. That's all I need to say.

Speaker 1:

Well, and Elizabeth just shared so much information in her interview and we'll link to that in the show notes. And actually, you know, Lynn, you are also an expert on a lot of these things and we did an episode way back, way back in the beginning, in the baby days, of the podcast. Episode nine was all about the differences between high school and college for learning students with learning differences in college, for learning students with learning differences. So I would recommend that to parents as well, that Elizabeth isn't the only one who really knows and understands this and and the importance of it. So we'll link to both of those.

Speaker 3:

And it's great, it's my world resource.

Speaker 1:

And, and this third edition just came out a couple of March, a couple of months ago, so so it's great. Okay, so I have one more, and this one is a little different than the other two. This one is definitely one of the kinds of books to college because it's all about studying and success and all of that. It's called Outsmart your Brain why Learning is Hard and how you Can Make it Easy, by Daniel Willingham. Willingham is a professor of psychology at University of Virginia and he's written a couple of other books, one called Raising Kids who Read and one called why Don't Kids Like School. So, um, he's, you know, got this background. So two things as I start out. First of all, I have to be upfront, I haven't finished reading this book, but it's also a book where you can jump around to different chapters depending on what you need and what you want and what's appropriate at the moment.

Speaker 1:

So I haven't quite finished it, but I've spent a lot of time with it and read a good bit of it, you know. The second is I have a little bit of a problem with the title Outsmart your Brain great. Why Learning is Hard, great and how you Can Make it Easy. I'm not sure easy is the word I would have picked, but I think I get why he has, because we're all often looking for an easy fix for something. So I sort of get why it's in the title, but I think it's a little misleading. It's more strategies for succeeding why do you do what you do? Understanding your brain and why we work with our brain the way we do and how we can work with it differently. And he explains what he means by outsmarting it. He says people and this isn't just for students but that we tend to use strategies that feel easy and feel like they're working. So you know, as soon as I read this part, I started talking to my classes about this right away.

Speaker 1:

And that if you understand how your brain works, you can work around some of these that that you know. Understand that you use the things that feel easy and feel like they're working. That much of what students assume about learning is wrong, just plain wrong, and it leads to ineffective studying. The brain is set up to make you believe that you know more than you do, and I had to stop and think about that. You know, but that's what he goes on to explain throughout the book. So a couple of examples he said there's a chapter on reading, how you should read your textbook, your assignments, and he said the brain expects the author to make comprehension easy. We assume that the author has put stuff there so that it will be easy for us to absorb, but remembering that when you're reading a textbook, you're not reading to be entertained, you're reading to learn something new, and that learning something new is often hard. I mean just on a real basic level understanding that might help the way you approach that. He talks about familiarity is not the same thing as comprehension or retention, and that knowing means being able to explain something, not just understanding it when someone else explains it. So actually I was just having a conversation yesterday with another faculty member and in our college we're all advisors we advise students, help them pick their classes and plan their path, and talk about majors and minors and all of that. And we have a new software for doing that. Some of us are more comfortable with technology than others, but we have a new software for working with that and it's going to be wonderful. But it is definitely a learning curve for us as faculty so that we can work with the students with this new thing.

Speaker 1:

And this other faculty member was expressing some frustration that he had attended a workshop where they walked us through all of these things and it all seemed to make sense. But now that he was trying to do it, he really couldn't and it wasn't working. And it was exactly that. You know, when we sat there and we sat in this workshop, it all made sense and they walked us through. Oh yeah, you do this, you do this, you do this, I get it. And then when I sit down to do it, I can't, and so I was trying to explain to him how to do some of these things and that was when it started to make more sense to me. So you know, just understanding that about your brain.

Speaker 3:

I love the. You know. I think it's really good for faculty to be in that position of having to learn new things, because it certainly helps us connect with our students.

Speaker 1:

It keeps us humble, that's for sure. Yeah, learning is challenging yeah. And you know, as I read this, I started with my students right away and I asked them when you study for a test, what do you do? And a lot of them said I reread the chapters, which is the worst thing, because that's when you're you know. You're looking at it and saying, yeah, that makes sense, that I understand that, but that's different than testing yourself or getting together with a partner and trying to explain a concept to them and you learn it differently.

Speaker 2:

You know, you never learn taking notes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah you never learn anything as well as when you try to teach it to someone else. So those are just sort of examples, and he has this wonderful kind of cycle of the components of learning. I thought this was really interesting too. And he says learning doesn't need to begin with your interest. It begins with openness and curiosity. Your interest, it begins with openness and curiosity. And he has a really cool chart in the book of how you know, interest leads to curiosity, it leads to digging deeper, leads to something else and then leads back to interest.

Speaker 1:

And I think that whole concept is really important for students who, as almost all of them do, no matter where they go to school, are going to face some what we call general education requirements. You know, some courses that you have to take to broaden. And you know I sit with students and say you have to take a social science, which would be psychology or sociology or politics, and they say I'm really not interested in that. And then they are required to take that course and they come in with this mindset of this is going to be hard, or this is going to be boring, or because I'm not interested. Hard, or this is going to be boring, or or or because I'm not interested and that you can come at it with different attitudes, that idea of curiosity yeah, I know.

Speaker 1:

All right, I'm gonna see what this is all about and then you might develop the interest. So you know it. This book is very much a how to. You know, know, here's how to do it, but with the understanding of why the how-to works. You know why does this tip work? I think this would be an ideal graduation gift for somebody graduating and going on to college. Just a list of the chapters you get how-to. Each chapter is how to understand a lecture. Just a list of the chapters Plan your work, defeat procrastination, stay focused, cope with anxiety, gain self-confidence. How to, how to, how to and why the how to works. It's not a book. You sit down and read cover to cover, some chapters do build on other ones and then you flip back and you say oh, I'll do that.

Speaker 1:

So I think this is a great book, a really practical book. It's a brand new book. It just came out this spring Outsmart your Brain. So hopefully this will provide some summer reading and fall reading and maybe winter reading. There is a lot. If you are a parent of a college student, every now and then sort of pick up with curiosity Maybe that's our theme for the day and say what's out there. So we will have show notes. We will list all of these books with easy links. You can just go to the link and shop right through the show notes for these books. You don't have to be listening to this and writing everything down. And we will also list to our other three summer read podcasts from previous years, because a lot of those books if you're a new college parent and you haven't read those those are wonderful too.

Speaker 1:

There's just so much you're not going to be able to do anything else all summer.

Speaker 1:

So we hope that you know we've shared some books, we've shared some thinking, and that if you are a new college parent or a veteran college parent, that it's been helpful and that you will share this with other parents, other people you know who may be at the same point that you are, and the best thing you can do for us is to spread the word and help other people find the podcast. So thank you for being here, thank you for sticking to the bitter end and until next time.

Speaker 3:

Bye.