Modern College, Week 1: Help Us Write the Ultimate Book on College
This post is part of the Modern College book project, in which we will be publicly documenting our experience writing a book on college with the help of the community.
Over the course of 2019, I, along with my Coauthor (Kasey Altman) will be publishing what we hope to be the best book on college ever written. While this is a bold statement, we believe that we are not only capable of doing it, but that we must do it.
Here’s the catch: we need your help in order to accomplish this lofty goal. Over the course of the next 365 days, Kasey and I will be publicly documenting all phases of our book journey, from ideation and rough drafts to the publishing process.
While sharing this much of the book writing process isn’t typical, we believe there are a number of clear benefits from doing so. After all, we aren’t actually writing this book for ourselves, we are writing it for all of you.
By essentially “open-sourcing” our book, it will allow us to get feedback in real-time from our readers while multiplying the book’s impact by gaining insight from unique perspectives.
Secondly, we hope to build an active community along the way. Aside from some scattered Reddit threads or Facebook groups, there isn’t really an active community talking about college. Modern College isn’t just a book; it’s a movement of prospective students, current students, and alumni lending their experiences and perspectives on college.
We still need to iron out the details, but for each person who contributes to the book (whether it be commenting on our posts, writing us emails or following the Modern College publication), we will provide some type of shout out in the final manuscript.
Before we dive into the details of what we will be writing and how we will be writing it, we wanted to begin by explaining our why.
Why We Are Writing Modern College
It’s no secret the college landscape is rapidly evolving. Consider two macro factors influencing the modern college experience: the internet and the rising student debt crisis. Now rewind a few decades back to when these elements didn’t yet exist. This is the same time period in which the most popular college resources were written.
Don’t believe me? Do a quick scan of the internet and you will find the majority of advice on how to approach college is grossly outdated. Consider the picture below:
This is Harlan Cohen. Cohen is 45 years old and graduated from college in 1995. He also happens to be the author of one of the best-selling books on college ever written.
That’s right, a guy who graduated college before Google or the invention of the iPhone is considered one of the top gurus on college. But it’s not fair to pick on Harlan, because the truth is that almost every popular college book on the market has been authored by someone who graduated over a decade ago.
So why are we a better option? For starters, we have an entire community backing us. This book won’t be the product of one person’s thoughts, but rather a collective.
Additionally, the book is being authored by 2 people, Kasey and myself, who graduated college within the past month and 2 years respectively. The successes and failures of our college experiences are still fresh. As much as we encourage the learning lessons summoned from falling flat on your face, we’re here to provide resources to help you brush yourself off and put yourself in a position to succeed.
In summarizing our “why” behind writing modern college, it’s actually pretty simple. We were those lost college students not long ago, and our experiences would’ve been exponentially easier had someone pointed us to the “cheat codes” for getting the most out of college. You know… like the Quizlet flashcard answers.
Unfortunately, these resources didn’t exist for us while we were in college, so we feel compelled to create them for you. If we could hop into a time machine and travel back to our freshmen years of college, this is the book we would hand to our younger selves.
So What is Modern College About?
Good question!
Truth be told, we haven’t yet nailed the specifics of what will be in our book. However, the good news is that you will get to see what we are thinking each week & also have the chance to give us suggestions.
This much we know for certain: the book will be about navigating the modern college experience to set yourself up for success beyond. Outside of that, while we have a lot of initial ideas, we are trying to avoid narrowing in right away. Stay tuned as we dive into the book’s thesis, contents and more in upcoming blog posts.
How Are We Going to Write the Book?
Writing a book is a difficult task to accomplish even under normal circumstances; however, it’s even more challenging when balancing the work between two authors and going up against a tight timeframe. To combat these challenges, we have a few ideas for making sure we stay on track:
Open-sourcing the book: As mentioned earlier, we will be open-sourcing our book to get input/ideas from the community. Aside from these contributions, it also gives us an important tool at our disposal: accountability.
Organizing our work: When looking at writing a book in a holistic sense, it can seem daunting or even impossible. However, the easiest way to tackle hard challenges is to break them down into more achievable chunks. Here are the different steps we plan to tackle one at a time:
Define book thesis & overview (Step 1)
Research & gather ideas (Step 2)
Create the book outline & Table of Contents (Step 3)
Write the first draft (Step 4)
Write the final manuscript (Step 5)
Publish the book (Step 6)
Setting rigorous deadlines: We have a number of short and long-term deadlines. Each week we will be publishing a new blog post as a summary of everything we worked on that week.
We are also mapping each step to a timeframe. Here is a rough idea for how long we think each step will take:
January: Complete Step 1
February: Complete Step 2
March-April: Complete Step 3
May-July: Complete Step 4
July-September: Complete Step 5
October-December: Complete Step 6
There’s always a weird mix of excitement and fear accompanying square one of any journey or challenge. We understand writing this book will not be easy. And yet, instead of leaving our college experiences behind and focusing in on the next pivotal period of our lives, we feel compelled to step back and share our lessons with you.
We share a burning desire to provide valuable insight to college students navigating their way. We realize there’s a population of people hungry for this information, and we’re here to compile it into one resource. With innumerable unique perspectives, we’re calling on all of you to help.
We are going to do this together.
Welcome to Modern College, the book.
- Alex Valaitis & Kasey Altman
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