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demifang21 's review for:
Post Grad: Five Women and Their First Year Out of College
by Caroline Kitchener
Few complaints about this book. Still feels relevant even though I'm over a year out (perhaps because graduate school seems like more school and this month marks the start of my more ambiguous post-grad life.) So many highlights of feelings I could identify with - struggling to define Princeton relationships post-Princeton, reflecting on the Princeton environment nurturing this relentless drive to to demonstrate growth and betterment, the struggle to make new friends in a new place, the paradox of when is appropriate to shape your future based on your partner's plans and how that will look to others (haha, just kidding, can't relate), etc.
Thought it was brave for the author to decide to include her own rocky relationship with her parents, especially her mom, and could relate with a lot of those complicated feelings. Also appreciated the author's conscious decision to select her subjects with diversity in mind - they each had their own unique family and professional issues, and yet there were so many similar threads of feelings that cropped up in each of their lives post-grad.
I enjoyed the author occasionally letting in details pertaining to how she collected these women's stories - like how Alex is sometimes painstakingly accurate and candid with everything she's going through, while Olivia completely drops off the radar by the end of the book. I thought Kitchener also inserts a healthy amount of personal commentary while telling their stories, some of it critical and objective (like moments when Olivia seems hypocritical or hyperbolic, or when she notices how future-oriented and future-obsessed Alex is), but some of it very personal (like how she could relate to Denise's anxieties about leaving a perfectly good place that had become a home for a strange new place that supposedly held promise and potential, or how she kept asking Michelle about how she'd sworn off relationships before dating yet another guy).
As much as I'd like to recommend the book to others just out of college, I'm uncertain whether it would be as enjoyable to the non-Princeton alum. The references were easy for me, but Kitchener makes sure to explain references anyways for the non-Princetonian. I feel like some of the toxic college vibes viewed in retrospect would be relatable to any other graduate of a supposedly "elite" school, but I am not sure how much of the book remains Princeton-specific. In any case, the effect for me was added comfort that the complex feelings - loneliness, confusion, conflicted drive, disorientation, questioning measures of self-worth - that follow my college years are experienced by fellow college graduates of a wide variety of backgrounds.
Thought it was brave for the author to decide to include her own rocky relationship with her parents, especially her mom, and could relate with a lot of those complicated feelings. Also appreciated the author's conscious decision to select her subjects with diversity in mind - they each had their own unique family and professional issues, and yet there were so many similar threads of feelings that cropped up in each of their lives post-grad.
I enjoyed the author occasionally letting in details pertaining to how she collected these women's stories - like how Alex is sometimes painstakingly accurate and candid with everything she's going through, while Olivia completely drops off the radar by the end of the book. I thought Kitchener also inserts a healthy amount of personal commentary while telling their stories, some of it critical and objective (like moments when Olivia seems hypocritical or hyperbolic, or when she notices how future-oriented and future-obsessed Alex is), but some of it very personal (like how she could relate to Denise's anxieties about leaving a perfectly good place that had become a home for a strange new place that supposedly held promise and potential, or how she kept asking Michelle about how she'd sworn off relationships before dating yet another guy).
As much as I'd like to recommend the book to others just out of college, I'm uncertain whether it would be as enjoyable to the non-Princeton alum. The references were easy for me, but Kitchener makes sure to explain references anyways for the non-Princetonian. I feel like some of the toxic college vibes viewed in retrospect would be relatable to any other graduate of a supposedly "elite" school, but I am not sure how much of the book remains Princeton-specific. In any case, the effect for me was added comfort that the complex feelings - loneliness, confusion, conflicted drive, disorientation, questioning measures of self-worth - that follow my college years are experienced by fellow college graduates of a wide variety of backgrounds.