About the book

So, what the heck is Carpe College!?

Carpe College!Well, it’s certainly not a perfect Latin translation because that would mean ‘Seize the College!’  And inciting riots won’t get any of us anywhere, so let’s simply settle on a fast and loose translation:  ‘Seize the college experience (in its entirety)’.

Carpe College! is an idea.  An approach.  An M.O.  A habit.  A way of embracing everything college life throws your way – academics and the rest – and doing so with vigor.  Or, as President Kennedy would have said, “with VIGAH!”  It’s also an exploration, a continual experiment, a series of tests and trials and the dipping of many toes into many different waters in an attempt to uncover who you are and how you fit… with others… with the world at large… with your own notion of who you’d like to become.

This is Carpe College!

It’s being liberated and taking risks.  It’s being smart about managing those risks, not cowering before them, but recognizing that all the best learning comes from risk-taking and results.  Risk-taking and results.  Rinse.  Repeat.

It’s about reinventing yourself and finding yourself, knowing that you’re still emerging and growing all along.

plan

It encompasses both the LEARNING and the LIVING parts of college, never easy to separate, but we’ll do so for our purposes.  We’ll explore strategies and stories that encourage you to actively and intentionally seek success in all facets of the experience.  We’ll toss out some ideas that you can try in your first semester, or blow off until second semester, or revisit after your first year (if you come crawling back with your tail between your legs because you didn’t listen the first time).  And we’ll predicate all of it around our mantra:

‘Know Thyself. Have a Plan.
Assume No One Else Cares.’

Whether it’s your academic life or your life outside the classroom, this mantra will serve as a friendly reminder and useful guide.

In the end, the ultimate goal of Carpe College! is to help you make the most of your college experience.  Your college years will fly by as quickly as high school did, and you’ll want to embrace every rich bit of it.  The end result, we hope, is that you can experience what Joseph Campbell called ‘Finding Your Bliss.’  By actively and intentionally embracing the college experience, taking some risks, getting out of your comfort zone and trying lots of stuff, we hope you can find what makes you happy.

In fact, that’s what Carpe College! is all about.  Beginning the next phase of your life – the college phase – actively and intentionally seizing every moment and every opportunity in order to find, and ultimately follow, your bliss.

Publisher:  Woodsman Press

One Response to About the book
  1. Vilnis John Giga says:

    As a career high school teacher of mostly seniors Mike Metzler’s book is a “must” read. Carpe College is written in the idiom of today’s young people, scholarly but readable, humorous but philosophical, practical but cerebral