Dozens of images come to mind when you think about college life. Professors. Fraternities. Tweed jackets with suede elbow patches. Parties. Football games. Backpacks loaded with books. Parties. Intense seminars. Sororities. Huge, hushed classrooms filled with students taking tests. Parties. All-night cram sessions. Wool sweaters/surfboards (depending on region). Beverages. A blinking cursor on a blank computer screen. The homecoming parade.
To be sure, heading off to college for the first time is one of life’s great milestones. You’re finally leaving the nest, heading out on your own to choose your own path. You’re ready to learn what it takes to succeed, to explore your inner self, and to figure out what you really want to be. The world is your oyster— if only you can figure out how to shuck it.
Thankfully, first-time college students have a variety of resources at their disposal to help them prepare. Guidance counselors, alumni, faculty advisors, resident advisors, and campus tour guides do their best to give students a sense of what’s in store. And when it comes to the basics, they do just fine. They are perfectly capable of preparing you for the more common challenges you’ll face at school—how to pick a major, how to add or drop classes, how to improve your study habits, and how to find your way around campus. Your mom can teach you how to do your laundry and heat up canned soup, and your high school teachers should be able to give you the basic study skills you’ll need.
But what about when college life takes a sudden turn for the worse?
Who do you go to when you discover you have a nightmare roommate, or when you’re served a tray of completely unrecognizable and probably dangerous institutional food? How do you deal with a thoroughly gross dorm bathroom, or open a bottle without an opener? What’s the best way to ask your parents for money, and how do you survive the walk of shame? What do you do if you’ve never attended a class and now you have a test?
That’s where we come in.
With expert advice from experienced bartenders, truckers, lifeguards, safety instructors, bail bondsmen, poison control workers, and, of course, professors, admissions officers, and psychologists, among many other experts, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: College is your guide. It is required reading for every student.
We’ve organized the book into four sections— Getting Settled, Room and Board, Extracurricular Survival Skills, and Class Survival—and have included an appendix with extra special aids: Because we know that sounding smart can be even more important than being smart, we’ve provided an easy-to-use pronunciation guide to philosophers, artists, and writers with weird names. The appendix also includes a useful letter/speech to tell your parents that you’ve been expelled. And should all else fail, there’s a more-or-less realistic-looking diploma (you fill in your name) that you can enlarge on a photocopy machine, frame, and hang.
Whether you’re attending a small college or a large university, living in a dorm or off-campus, or are a freshman or a senior, you still must survive your college experience. This book tells you how.
—The Authors