Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan: 'Chicken Soup' short on sound advice

Spring break is over, the home stretch of the semester has begun, and for my fellow seniors, just a few short weeks remain to wrap up the entire college experience.

So, to echo the sentiments a wise woman (Madonna) once expressed, what I need right now is some good advice.

Thankfully, people seem to be full of it -- entire books have been written to guide young graduates as they stumble into the real world. But how helpful, really, are all these life lessons? How do we know who to trust as a reliable source of advice? Whose well-meaning words of wisdom might result in us sleeping in an alley with our diplomas for a pillow?

One thing's for sure: Chicken Soup for the Soul will be about as helpful as an inner tube to someone stranded in a typhoon. Sure, these treacly tomes try really hard to help, but in the end they're regrettably worthless.

Call me cynical, but the Chicken Soup books we've all seen/read/been given as high school graduation gifts are simply unbearable. The overwhelmingly saccharine anecdotes would be forgivable if they slipped some solid lessons in among the feel-good essays -- but if the college version is any indication, I can't even give 'em that.

With more than three-and-a half years of college under my belt, surely I'm qualified to judge the soundness of the advice and guidance the folks at Chicken Soup dish out to undergrads. Would reading chapters that start off with "That semester, professor Jones taught me so much more than organic chemistry ..." truly have prepared us for all the challenges that college life has to offer? I couldn't choke the book down in high school, but recently I had to see.

One of the main points that Chicken Soup for the College Soul really wants to hit you over the head with is that college is the time to escape the constraints of high school society and really discover who you are. Take risks, it counsels. Try those things you always wanted to try. Be independent. Do this and of course, you'll graduate completely secure in your identity and your future.

Wow, rather tall orders for the four brief years it takes most students to get a degree. I bet a lot of us went skipping off to college for the first time intending to have it all figured out by the time we tossed our caps, but really, who among us can confidently declare that we do? It's not for lack of trying, either -- but despite what Chicken Soupers would have us believe, joining the drama club or taking astronomy won't expand your mind to the point of all-encompassing perception. Nope, that takes at least five years.

The Chicken Soup people also tell us that once we're secure in ourselves, it's time to learn how to love. Oh yes, the book gushes, this is the time to fall in love and be overcome by passion and understand what it feels like to put someone else's needs in front of your own. It'll be tough, sure, but you'll learn so much about yourself and other people and life itself that the entire experience is absolutely necessary.

Well, that's just great for the four of you who found your soul mates wandering the halls of this university. The rest of us, busy gleefully hooking up with random classmates or complaining about the pitiable dating pool around here, probably haven't learned our love lessons in quite the way the Chicken Soup posse meant it. And yet, somehow, life goes on.

These little gems continue for pages and pages -- it's OK to fail if you try! People die, so appreciate life! Embrace diversity and go talk to that kid with the nose ring! But the overall message these books carry is aw-shucks, you-can-do-it optimism.

The problem with the Chicken Soup for the Soul books is that they're so hopelessly upbeat that we just can't take them seriously. Now, there's nothing wrong with an encouraging word now and then, but we've seen the kinds of challenges that lie ahead, and we're not so na‹ve to think that everything is going to be perfect. Please, somebody, give it to us straight.

So who does a confused young person turn to when Chicken Soup can't be trusted? Anyone who can tell us something useful, something real and maybe something hard to hear. That's all right, though, because a solid piece of advice that can actually help us in the long run is ultimately preferable to a sugarcoated assurance that we're going to be just fine.

You might as well toss that copy of Chicken Soup. But if you don't, good luck suppressing the gag reflex.

Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan is a senior communications major from Wheaton, Ill. Six Feet One appears on Tuesdays.

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