Anyone who has ever wanted a how-to guide on college life look no further. No, this is not a Peterson’s guide to choosing the right school or a checklist of what to bring, but rather a book titled “Student Body Shots: Another Round.” In this 100 or so page “manual” author, columnist, and comedian Steve Hofstetter gives his own advice on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the best four to six years of your life.
With the follow up to “Student Body Shots,” this 25-year-old Columbia University graduate once again lends his sarcasm and witty commentary to everything from doing laundry to registration, to the all-important social life.
Have you ever thought “Why do professors get more upset if you show up for class having not done the reading than if you skipped class entirely?” “How much better would it be if orientation packets came with the names, phone numbers, and menus of all the nearby take out menus?,” and “Why does no one like to do laundry because it takes so much time? You’ll wait on line to get into a bar for a half hour, but you won’t spend twenty minutes making sure you have something to wear while you’re there.” Hofstetter touches on all these things and much more with sections titled “Welcome to College,” “The Daily Grind,” “Men and Women” and “Facilities,” to name a few.
“Another Round” also includes some humor on that scary transition from college student to recent graduate. Hofstetter writes, “You won’t realize how easy it was to meet people while you were in school until after you graduate. You get an apartment, and you wonder what’s up with all your neighbors’ butts preventing them from coming over and saying hi. And then you’re like, ‘Oh right, lives.'” And when you start working “you’ll get this urge to pay for stuff whenever you visit. Which would make sense except that you’re not even making half of what you owe in student loans, and the people at the end of the table are still living off their parents.” And be sure to “never ask a graduating senior where they’re working after graduation. If they don’t have a job, it will piss them off. And if they do, it will piss you off because you don’t have a job.”
“Student Body Shots: Another Round” could be, as Hofstetter states “the last book you will read for pleasure in the next four years.” He says to approach his book with the same mentality you would college, sarcastically remarking “there are passages meant to teach you a few things (like some classes), there are also passages that offer no educational value (like some classes).”
Either way this read is guaranteed to have you laughing or at least connecting it to your own college experience. I mean hey, who doesn’t like another round?
