College life intimidates in myriad ways—foreign academics (Paleobotany or dinosaur era plants), meal preparation (goodbye, home cafeteria), that lone red sock in a load of whites, brand new friendships, creative economics (frugality a must), cultural campus norms that seem unlike any familiar so far, triumvirate race-class-gender biases, and these are preliminary starts on first year college freshman challenges—the word challenge as euphemism for what in the blazes is this new place?

Consider that of those ten optimistic students who begin college in August or September, five will decide in June that college is too “difficult,” for those challenges begin to weigh heavy, and so around 50 percent of college students opt for full-time at Starbucks or Home Depot, instead. We lose half of them in the first year.

Needs clarifying that the barista work and mixing color just right in a gallon of paint has worth. True that I am a lesbian woman having earned a masters degree in 20th Century American Literature with a minor in Rhetoric and Composition. Even so, the last four years I have operated a lawn mower, weed whacker, pruning shears, a rake and shovel. Landscaping work has opened my world. Yet these Hawai'i experiences followed reading books often, thoroughly, and openly. The college texts that I read at UC Santa Barbara, from 18 to 22 years old, changed my life.

And I wish for every youth to experience expansive reading that encourages an open mindset, cultivating a world view premised on staying curious. Constant reading for four years while earning an initial college degree, especially if attending after high school, will influence a student's remaining decades of living. Four years of reading books in a focused learning environment impacts the rest of a student's life.

In conversation with a Kona, Hawai'i UPS driver one day, he shared that as an English Literature major he still reads constantly and college was worth every effort. What work follows the degree counts, true, yet the intrinsic value to enjoy life with a curious, open mindset can be the college take away, distinct from whatever paid work happens later. And to remain a lifelong reader.

One of the best solutions I offer to remedy the statistic that 50 percent of college freshman choose to quit college is for students to treat professors like a dog. During my summer vacation this year 2024 I sat in a living room where a television resides (have not had a TV in my house for the longest), so I thought to browse. Is channel surfing more accurate? What is this thing called TV? Clicking the remote control from station to station brings me infinite amusement (doesn't take much, dear reader). Usually we agree the universe brings spontaneous tutorials that you and I need. Grumble we do at this truth, and honesty might be in there, still.

Four families I witnessed attempting to care for a dog gone mildly—no, wildly—neurotic. Going on walks was an exercise in eccentricity. Random yanks on the leash over here, a sprint to oblivion into car traffic right there, incessant barking, chewing that expensive living room sofa to shreds, and the inevitable dog bite—random harm. Let's consider how similar behaviors might occur in a classroom. How many classes I experienced as an undergraduate and graduate student, where random memorizing of 200 art history slides to be quizzed on 20 of them for the midterm seemed illogical as a measure of learning. Or a thoroughly researched essay in Anthropology 101 due at end of term, ten pages, with minimal prep to recognize what is expected. The point is that dogs act neurotic and professors act eccentric because they are in their own world. How would a dog caregiver intuitively know to walk a dog? And how might a professor, devoted to her subject matter for years, intuitively understand how to share all that knowledge? Training is necessary in academic culture. Then Cesar shows up.

He arrives to the family's home and observes intently the interactions between humans and canine. In each scenario the dog has complete control over the human who stands helpless, hapless, and, at times, hopeless by their beloved family pet's side. What has happened is that good people have tutored themselves in learned helplessness. So, Cesar asks the family to go on a walk.

Inside a college classroom, professors often bring well-intentioned behaviors that are unclear to students new to academic protocols: lucid note taking, extensive readings, synthesizing from materials, and myriad learning dynamics different than high school. Academics is a foreign country for most. But the professor has been here for a while, and over time can evolve as eccentric. And a freshman student can have a sense of learned helplessness when struggling to succeed academically.

Cesar suggests that families take the lead as I do that students take the lead in their classrooms. When Cesar identifies a dog's erratic, eccentric behavior, he quickly and gently implores the dog caregiver to be more confident. He sources the dog's wayward behavior as a reflection of the owner. But he does so with care and without blame. Likewise, a college student can train or interact with her college professor so that basic learning success happens. The student must take the lead. Ask questions. Visit the teacher during office hours. Participate in class. Follow up with more questions. Go for the more helpful p word—be proactive rather than procrastinate.

Cesar can work with a family briefly on a 15 minute walk to observe changes in interactions. Dogs, and even professors, are smart. Voice tone. Repetition. Confidence. These are the tools to facilitate success. Once outside the family's home, as the walk begins, Cesar coaches the human to walk confidently with the dog at his side. Within ten minutes, the dog begins to respond differently.

A slower pace happens because the canine caregiver has been coached on holding the leash clearly and firmly. On the television screen, I saw one family after the next in humble tears that after years of failed dog relations, Cesar's strategies opened the canine-human connection again because Cesar teaches that wayward dog behaviors mimic human uncertainty. He shows the folks how to walk kindly and confidently with their dogs.

Similarly, a confident student can kindly take the lead and demonstrate to the professor what learning processes can help in the learning moment. For example, one time in a graduate seminar I had prepared a brief talk on Literary Feminist Theory. The professor was intelligent and funny and seldom allowed students to speak freely, and was always interrupting. I asked if he could hold his questions, thoughts, and insights until I was done. His jaw dropped. I was the first student that quarter (ten week seminar) to make the request. Twenty minutes later, we seminar students went into relaxed conversation, including the professor, and I enjoyed the process. I had to train the teacher how to respond more equitably.

Students have a right to train the college classroom to work for them. Education is a service provided by professors and often the misunderstanding is the professor—or the dog, as the case may be—has complete control. Intellectual work is still work and has no hierarchy over other labors, yet an unclear elitism can occur inside academics that students perceive and thus find the learning work too “difficult.” One gentle suggestion I have for every college freshman is to go directly to a pet store and purchase a leash. Sounds bizarre yet props are helpful when making a start in a new world. Organize this item in your backpack as symbolic reminder that when the classroom learning gets away from you, reign in the leash. Train your teacher to make all clear. Doing so is her or his job.

The unexpected and joyful irony is that dogs and professors respond so fabulously well when shown this care. In Cesar's show the gushing of tears and thank you and thank you and thank you are wonderfully dramatic and nerdy at the show's end. And professors so welcome students who show interest in their intellectual subject matter, a focus they have devoted an entire life to often enough. Caring for a dog makes us humans vulnerable. We care. And attempting to earn a college degree can remind students of prior or current learning helplessness, feeling vulnerable. Closing the gap can happen quickly when a student leader steps forward—demonstrating and asking how to succeed academically.

Even walking without a dog, yet keeping curiosity for wandering, has purpose for future college students. A casual immersion in campus culture is a healthy start, I believe. This summer without any agenda I brought my 13 year old son to a few colleges simply to walk around and experience diverse university spaces. Strolling for a brief while we did at UC Santa Cruz, Cal State East Bay, Arizona State (Lake Havasu campus), Cal State University Monterey Bay, and University Nevada, Las Vegas. At UNLV we toured the library and through one window we could see the city strip a short distance away. And I thought that can sometimes be the gap between going and staying at college or not—a few walking blocks distance.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas library with a clear view of the strip not so far away.

Summer 2024 arrives to a close and as I reflect on the journey, I see that our family went on an airplane and drove a car to view different terrains this summer. Grateful, for sure, and the five novels and one nonfiction book also took me places beyond what I could hope for—and changed me, for good. This continual curiosity I have, especially a zest for reading, has been gifted early roots from when I went to college in 1983, a life long reward.

Following are the reading travels I took this summer:

College separates us from and gifts a new perspective on our family of origin; in McMillan's novel, she teaches how the Prices family ignores, shouts, hugs, supports and respects each other while living integrous inside African American culture.

*A Day Late and a Dollar Short* by Terry McMillan

Brand new topics will appear on college syllabi like undiscovered plants along the river banks and Grand Canyon walls aside the Colorado River; every obstacle in your college path will happen and women encounter even more boulders to identify and dispel, yet botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter persist for 43 days on a 1938 summer river trip.

*Brave the Wild River, the Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon* by Melissa L. Sevigny

Finding a way to afford college can happen (suggestion: avoid name brand schools) and Mae Marvel's novel arrived freely given away at San Francisco's Anza public library. The titanic love story Katie Price and Wil Greene experience challenges each woman to bring her best self.

*Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous* by Mae Marvel (two women, one authorship)

Humanities topics are the reason why colleges began—absorbing diverse perspectives through wildly unlikely events, these are your history classes, and through unreliable narrators, these are your literature seminars. After fiction character Helen Knightly decides to murder her mother, every family participant faces defining a reinvented role in the family system.

Continuing to succeed in college requires noticing systemic influences on your life or what initiative you have in your life as top dog; in the novel Prodigal Summer, intricate ecosystems in nature are described as echelons of power, especially the role humans render living in proximity.

Thou mayest. You have choice. Tishmel. After 602 pages, the message rings thunderously clear in East of Eden that a life, any life, yours, mine, propels on independent decisions. College readings and learnings remind so thoroughly the myriad cultures (food, fashion, music, literature and more), histories, and geographies that influence each and every life—and yet still, tishmel. Especially vivid choices are possible after expanding one's worldview. Tishmel is a sacred Jewish word for mystery operates, sure, and again the agency to choose how to live your own full life is there for the attending.