First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School, The

Journal of College Student Development, Nov/Dec 2008 by Brigham, Adam T

Overall, this book deserves credit for attempting to tackle the complex subjects of student culture and the high school to college transition. In many respects, an effort like this is really three studies in one: a study of high school culture, a study of college culture, and a study of the transition. Given the complexity of this research project, I believe that the author would have benefitted from a more thorough review of the existent literature on college student transitions. In my review of the selected bibliography, I found that the list contained only one article from a journal dedicated to the study of the college experience (Journal of American College Health) and few books by student affairs scholars. Acknowledging that not every resource utilized by the author is included in a selected bibliography, I believe that a study on the transition from high school to college (or other post high school activity) would be well informed by the scholarship presented in outlets such as the Journal of the First Year Experience and Students in Transition, Journal of College Student Development, Review of Higher Education, or Research in Higher Education.

The findings presented in The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School will be familiar to most student affairs professionals. The author's emphases on daily management and identity development allude to the more substantive findings of student affairs scholars such as Chickering and Reisser (1993) or Baxter Magolda (2008). As Clydesdale acknowledges, developmental processes may (and usually do) occur in a non-linear, non-incremental manner that does not lend itself to convenient theorizing. These developmental patterns also may or may not neatly coincide with life events such as graduation, matriculation, or an 18th birthday. This challenge is apparent in the author's perceptions of the study participants and in the discursive language that he uses to describe them: teens, young adults, adolescents, students, college teens, and high school seniors. While Clydesdale's use of the word "teen" to describe the participants is sometimes diminutive, student affairs professionals appreciate that students coming directly to college from high school are caught in a proto-adulthood. They are often legal adults (though not always), but are financially and instrumentally dependent on family (though not always). They can vote, but they cannot buy alcohol. Clydesdale's attempt to describe this ambivalent existence is helpful in that it confirms some informal theories that have developed in the collective consciousness of student affairs professionals.

REFERENCES

Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2008). Three elements of selfauthorship. Journal of College Student Development, 49, 269-284.

Chickering, A. W., & Reisser, L. (1993). Education and identity (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Reviewed by Adam T. Brigham, Iowa State University