A Car, Some Cash and a Place to Crash: The Only Post-College Survival Guide You'll Ever Need

by Rebecca Knight

HEY GRADUATE, ready to take on the Real World? You will be after absorbing the wisdom and wit of this comprehensive field guide to life after college. Learn everything you need to transition smoothly from carefree co-ed to a grad with a plan.

* Land a job-- a GOOD job--and an enviable apartment.
* LIVE LARGE no matter how small your salary.
* Make friends and INFLUENCE BOSSES.
* RETIRE EARLY.

All your most pressing questions answered-- New car or used? Debit or credit? Paper or plastic? -- especially those you've so skillfully managed to avoid until now.

Don't read A Car, Some Cash, and a Place to Crash for shopworn advice on how to "succeed" according to some formula. Instead, gain valuable perspective on doing it your way from professionals who remember their own first years out. Each chapter also links you to the most helpful sites on the Web so you can personalize your search for the very latest data on, say, the career of your choice or the city of your dreams.

Best of all, your comrade and coach through all this excitement is, herself, a recent college grad who knows exactly where you're coming from and where you want to be.

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Douglas Lord]

This preview of life after college offers sound, albeit basic advice for recent graduates. After a slick introduction, first-time author Knight assumes an instructional, Dutch-aunt tone. In addition to the titular concerns, there is decent material on adjusting to the professional workplace, kick-starting a social life, and maintaining overall health and fitness, based on interviews with recent grads and experts in the field. Resumes, interviews, and job hunting are better covered elsewhere (e.g., Martin John Yate's Resumes That Knock 'Em Dead), and some advice is trite: "In the Real World, successes are won mostly with discipline and commitment." This is the book that Knight wishes someone had handed her when she graduated, but at 370 pages, will kids really stick with it? For collections catering to recent graduates to complement books like Julie Jansen's I Don't Know What I Want but I Know It's Not This: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work and Peter McWilliams's Life 101.

Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.

[Anna]

A funny and down-to-earth guide to life in the "real world" - I'd definitely recommend it!