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Blueprint for Success in College and Career: A Book Review

The Academic Skills Center aims to provide the students of Dartmouth College with practical skills that they can use in order to become more successful students. Recently, our office came across a textbook that claims to be “a student’s guide for classroom and career success”. As we are always looking for new materials in order to inspire and encourage our students, I have decided to read through and provide a thorough review of this book.

Dartmouth Hall at dusk

Entitled, Blueprint for Success in College and Career, this textbook is a conglomeration of five different, open-source textbooks with aims in academic success, student resources, and career exploration. The creator of the book, Dave Dillon, collected the writing of different teachers and presented it as an Open Educational Resource. This means that it can be “licensed so that it can be used, shared, and re-mixed freely and legally”. This book is a free service and can be utilized by anyone at no cost to them. The link to this textbook will be a the bottom of this post. Feel free to check it out if you believe that it would be helpful to you.

This textbook is chock full of information. It has information about the multiple authors of the textbook, a foreword, a preface, information on what students should expect from the book, an informative introduction, and eleven units (containing sixty-one chapters in total). This can be great because through the online version, readers are allowed to search for specific topics that they need information and assistance with. On the other hand, the wealth of information can easily become very overwhelming.

My biggest qualm in this textbook is that in my opinion, there is way to much information in it for it to be organized the way that it is. For example, as I mentioned before, this book has an introduction. I personally really enjoyed reading the introduction, as it spoke about the trials and hardships that come with being a non-traditional student. There was a lot of really relevant statistical information and advice on the ways that non-traditional students need support.

However, moving into Chapter One, I found myself becoming very confused. This textbook is not specifically geared towards non-traditional students! In fact, chapter one dealt with general passion in regards to college. I personally prefer self-help books and life coaching that deals specifically with my own needs. This textbook felt like a jumble of different opinions and ideas on how many different people can become a successful college student many different ways.

While I understand what the creator of this textbook was trying to do, it fell flat for me because I found it hard to really hone in on what I was supposed to focus on. There was no true beginning, middle, or ending to the textbook. Once again, this could be a good additional resource for a student. If a student has a particular question, it is pretty easy to search through the contents to find the specific unit and chapter that will accompany their needs. Command F is also a great was to sift through information in the online format.

So to conclude, Blueprint for Success in College and Career, can be a great resource if utilized correctly. This is the sort of textbook that should only be used by students that are actively trying to answer specific questions in their academic life. As this book is quite large and detailed, it would take a proactive mind to make the best use of it. However, with the wealth of information included, it can work for many.

Click here to access the textbook. Enjoy!

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About Ashley Wells

Ashley is a 2020 graduate of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program where she concentrated in Creative Writing at Dartmouth. Her research centered on the intersections of race and gender from a literary perspective. She graduated with her second M.A. degree in American Studies at Columbia University in 2022, and she is currently a Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She can be contacted with questions at Ashley.E.Wells1@gmail.com