Navigating the college experience

A conversation with Bill McGarvey

by Christy Gualtieri (for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, July 28, 2024)

Back when author Bill McGarvey was a freshman at Georgetown University, the legal age for buying beer and alcohol was just 18. Don’t let that fool you though, the man knows a lot about the modern-day college experience.

His book, “The Freshman Survival Guide, soulful advice for Studying, Socializing and Everything In Between,” which he co-authored with Nora Bradbury-Haehl recently released its third edition. With the new school year just around the corner, I was happy to chat with him about the college experience today’s high school graduates face, and what he has found that has most helped them successfully navigate their college years.

The idea for “The Freshman Survival Guide” began back in the early 2000s when Mr. McGarvey was editor-in-chief of Busted Halo, a spiritually based resource website for teens and young adults. “One of my contributing editors was a youth minister who dealt with a lot of teenagers, and she realized they were going off to college and crashing and burning. She got the idea to have her teens meet with the college students and tell them to ask anything they wanted to ask,” he said.

The site began publishing articles based on these frank conversations, which grabbed the attention of a few colleges. “We came up with a one-page summary of the articles to give to the colleges they handed out at their orientations” Mr. McGarvey remembers and “it just took off. the second year we upgraded some of the information, it was downloaded 30,000 times.”

From there, it seemed like an easy decision to compile all those ideas into a book. Mr. McGarvey and Ms. Bradbury Haehl surveyed college students, resident assistants, professors and parents and compiled an extremely detailed guide for the entire college experience.

“We’re trying to help people make good decisions, not just about what to bring [with you to college], but about what a successful college career might look like,” he said. “It is meant to deal with mind, body and spirit.”

The comprehensive book, (which Mr. McGarvey jokingly referred to as a “laughably large 75-tool, Swiss Army Knife” of a resource) certainly deals with all three. There are chapters guiding college freshmen through their physical lives, (including how to be safe with alcohol and sex and how to navigate the school cafeteria for healthier food options); their intellectual lives (the chapter entitled “The Care and Feeding of the College Professor” greatly resonated with readers of earlier editions; their emotional lives (entire sections of the book explore various mental health strategies, time management and relationships); and their spiritual lives, which he thinks is greatly underexplored in today’s teens.

“Education is about forming the whole person,” he insists. “It’s not just about giving them skills to get them through life, but hopefully setting them up with values, helping them discover who they are and what they want.”

Some aspects of the college experience have been the same since its origins, like how to manage studying on one’s own, how to make friends and how to overcome homesickness. But others, like the incredible advances in technology that have occurred in just the last decade, are newer and increasingly difficult to navigate.

“Technology is really just another way to talk about connection and communication” he notes. “We know that it’s a very powerful tool, but it’s what you do with it helps people see these tools for what they are.”

It’s partly because of the rapid changes in technology that he adds. “I’m not sure that [teens are] coming in with skill sets they might have had 25 years ago to help them navigate college challenges.”

And challenges do abound, not just around technology. The recent pandemic and even more recent protests on college campuses have made a substantial impact.

“Students today are deeply challenged,” he admits, but he maintains the hope that students, if given the right information, will make informed choices. And that, for him, is the path to having the best college experience possible.

“If you make good choices,” he says, “you can have a successful college career. We’re here to give you options. The better informed you are, the better off you’re going to be.”

Christy Gualtieri is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Edgewood.