Mizumoto P: Inside Guide Colleg Succ

 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.

 

KEY TOPICS: 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...!  

 

MARKET: For First Year Experience, Student Success, and Introduction to College courses, as well as Student Orientation/Bootcamp.

 

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.