Nonfiction Monday: Hacking Your Education

Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will Dale J. Stephens

Stephens (founder of UnCollege) lays out his manifesto on why college isn’t the best option for most people and instead offers a new template on how to learn, grow, and find gainful employment.

Stephens was an unschooler and carries that mentality into higher education.

It’s a compelling case-- basically college is crazy expensive and the higher earnings degree holders used to see are shrinking. When you look at how much money you had to put into college in the first place-- it’s not necessarily at great ROI.

In the words of Good Will Hunting (and this quotation opens the book) “You wasted $150000 on an education for $1.50 in late fees at the library?”

Now, personally, I would have been a horrible uncollege student. I didn’t have the personal drive necessary to be successful at it.

But one thing I love about this book is it’s not just for college-- Stephen’s plan for life-long learning is great for learning at any point in your life--high school, college, post-college. He has a lot of really useful exercises to get you started and great ideas to get up and go.

It’s an quick and easy read and a very interesting look at education and how we can, and need to, make it work for us.

Today's Nonfiction Monday is over at Shelf-Employed.

Book Provided by... my local library

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Cum Laude

Cum Laude Cecily von Ziegesar

5 students meet at Freshman orientation and muddle their way through their first semester at a small liberal arts college in Maine.

This isn't nearly as juicy and scandal ridden as von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl series. There are fewer characters. While there's still a lot of sex, booze, and drugs, it's more in line with regular college partying. There are overprivileged characters to be sure, but middle class ones as well. I love how well she captured life at a small college in a small town. The little details are done really well and it will ring true for anyone who went to a small college. This takes place during the Bush/Clinton/Perot election. My college election was Bush/Gore/Nader but everything still felt right and rang really true.

I especially liked the storyline with Shipley and her brother and I want to see what happens with that. I like that Shipley and Tom had talents that you wouldn't expect of them. Eliza and Tragedy made me laugh.

This is a slower, less trashy but still juicy, and still just as literary (but not as overtly so) story than Gossip Girl. I can't tell if it's going to be a series or not. I kinda want it to be, because I really want to know what happens next, but I also get the sense that if it is, it will be 8-10 books and jump the shark around book 4. We'll see what happens.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Pysch Major Syndrome

Psych Major Syndrome Alicia Thompson

Leigh is a freshman at Stiles College where she must contend with academic arch-nemeses, her high school boyfriend, her high school boyfriend's hott but moody roommate, grad school pressure already, and a junior high mentee. Her roommate is awesome, her relationship with her boyfriend is... weird. Meanwhile, she's trying to figure everything out while not flunking out.

The plot is pretty basic (why are things weird with my jerk boyfriend and why am I having dreams about his super hott roommate?)

But really, this reminded me of a Meg Cabot* novel in all the best ways. The voice, the style of writing, the being completely neurotic while still a strong woman? Funny characters and great parents? Check to all the above.

I loved Leigh's voice and have a huge crush on Nate the roommate. I loved Leigh's roommate Ami and wanted to see Leigh's parents' psychic B&B.

Very funny with good romantic tension and I LOVE seeing books set in college. We need more about college students.

My one complaint? If campus is so small, why is she DRIVING to Andrew's dorm? Also, they have a psych building? And a different one for math? I went to a super-small college too, and psych and math had a share a building. They also had to share it with computer science, chemistry, biology, physics, and the occasional religious studies seminar. Other than that though, the small-college life details are pretty spot-on.

This is the first book I read after finishing Mockingjay. I needed something completely different while I recovered from the trauma and this fit the bill perfectly! Fun and sweet and the perfect happy-making book.

Overall, a super-fun book that I very much enjoyed.

*I actually read this because Meg Cabot sang its praises on her blog. The other book she recommended that I read was Silver Phoenix: Beyond the Kingdom of Xia. Clearly, her taste in books is awesome.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Poetry Friday

I'm off to Grinnell this morning for my 5th year reunion. In fact I'm blogging this yesterday. But here's a poem looking back at the 6 years since graduation.


6 years since graduation
5 new jobs
4 new places to live
3 new blogs
2 new grad programs started
1 "new" car

1 puppy
2 jobs left in despair
3 Thanksgivings hosted
4 trips overseas
5 hamsters buried in various backyards
6 pairs of jeans

6 trips for Christmas
5 Rosh Hashannahs
4 non-work email addresses
3 trips to the hospital
2 funerals
1 mortgage

1 love standing next to me
2 gained siblings
3 beds
4 Major League Baseball games
5 wedding anniversaries
6 years since graduation

Have a great weekend!

Belated Poetry Friday

So, yesterday I wasn't online at all in a mix of doctor's visits for the ear infection that will not die (seriously, it's like I'm 7 again), grocery shopping, reading, and generally sleeping a lot. So, I missed Poetry Friday, but here's my belated entry, and my all time favorite poem:

"Losing Track" by Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down,

the tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black
timbers of me,
a light growth of green dreams drying.


Blue Rose Girls has an amazing roundup of everyone, too. So amazing, that I'm not copying it all down. Or, if you do a google blog search for Poetry Friday and limit to last 24 hours, you get an impressive list.

And, as bonus in this post (or a navel gazing distraction, take your pick) I'll tell you a little story about myself.

I went to a very small college in a very small town in the middle of a corn field. Lately, I discovered that Kelly knows exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, second semester of my junior year, my friend John decided that the campus need some more poetry. He rounded up a group and we founded SITS (Shakespeare in the Sh**-er). The bathroom was the main communication forum, you see. That where the Student Health and Wellness Committee posted their newsletters (and their pleas for hand washing) and where the Student Government Association posted their joint board meeting minutes. We posted poetry. Every week for a semester, we rounded up oodles of poetry and plastered it in all the dorm room bathroom stalls on campus.

Then, senior year rolled around and Kate and John graduated, and I fell in love (and for some reason thought that my thesis, Classical Chinese, a history seminar, a Chinese calligraphy private lesson, a guided reading in Ancient Chinese Astronomy [under the guise of the physics department] and some other class, as well as working 20 hours a week sounded like a sane and rational plan)... anyway, SITS died, and I mourn it.

I miss Iowa.