College Fast Track: Essential Habits for Less Stress and More Success in College

A different perspective

In "College Fast Track: Essential Habits for Less Stress and More Success," author Derrick Hibbard has done something rather unique. Already having demonstrated his ability to distill great study habits into a potent liquor in his prior book, "Law School Fast Track," he turns his attention now to helping undergraduate students achieve similar success. But rather than approach his undergraduate advice from a dumbed-down standpoint (i.e. that it's "only" college and hardly as difficult as law school or other graduate programs, or that college kids need only the most generic, basic advice, leaving the more advanced advice until later in their academic careers, or that it's okay to learn by failure in college), he does what no other college guide before has done: he takes tried-and-true techniques for success in one of the most demanding graduate programs - law school - and applies these same, or very similar, techniques to undergraduate study. The advice contained in the book is based upon study techniques used by countless law students, but tuned towards college students (many of whom are beginners at knowing how to study in a higher-education environment). It's intense enough to carry the reader through college and through graduate school, but is in no way daunting, difficult, or complicated. What works for law students in "Law School Fast Track" also works for college students in "College Fast Track". Hibbard gives the reader the simple tools necessary to succeed in whatever academic studies they may encounter from this point forward. If his techniques are good enough for law students - which they are - then they're certainly good enough for undergrads. Hibbard correctly identifies that many college success publications contain too much information; they're far too large, far too comprehensive, and to be honest, a reader who doesn't know how to study in the first place isn't going to learn the techniques from a book that is as complicated and difficult as a college textbook. Hibbard reduces his techniques for success (which he rightly calls "habits", as they go far deeper than mere tricks or tips that can be applied superficially to situations, and should be incorporated fully into the reader's subconscious and applied out of habit, changing behavior rather than merely adding one more thing to forget about while studying) into fifteen simple, well-explained and meaningful habits to acquire. And these fifteen habits are general enough to apply to a wide variety of situations encountered in college, but specific enough to provide meaningful guidance and a plan for succeeding. They aren't platitudes, nor are they ultra-specific. Learning and incorporating Hibbard's fifteen habits will go a long way towards making the reader an effective student in 99% of all situations. For example, one enumerated habit is to write everyday. Good advice indeed, and Hibbard goes to great lengths to explain why it's important and how to implement the habit; how to incorporating writing into the reader's everyday studies. After reading that section of the book, the reader will be ahead of the game when it comes to college students as a whole, most of whom consider writing once a week to be a chore, and most of whom will eventually realize their shortsightedness when they struggle to write a coherent letter, memo, email or presentation in the workplace.