Preparing students for the world beyond college

By: Nate Jastrzemski

Posted: 4/11/07

"Dorm Rooms to Boardrooms" is an informative, "life experience" book filled with suggestions, hints and warnings of what a college graduate can reasonably expect to encounter in today's work environment.

Dr. Victoria Pilate, by her own description, exhausted numerous avenues of research in creating this book. She conducted countless interviews, researched trends and polls and added instances from her personal work experience, which apparently spanned decades and more than a few different companies, though she was at no time specific.

The book is printed on a durable and smooth paper that engenders a "not-cheap" feel to go along with the $13 cover price. The cover is navy blue and features a photographic hodgepodge of conveniently racially diverse people cartwheeling around a pointless computer-generated graphic.

The text on nearly every page is broken by at least one cutout or shaded box featuring tips, hints or figures; some readers feel this helps break up the monotony of too much text, and many in this book contain supporting facts and figures relevant to the section they appear in.

"Dorm Rooms to Boardrooms" weighs in at 294 pages. These are broken into 10 chapters, each of which is dedicated to a particular aspect of life as a professional.

While the book begins with a list of glowing reviews, only the reviewer's first name appears with a quotation. Not even a source is included, which makes the reviews themselves rather suspect.

Chapters one, two and three cover job-hunting, cost of living responsibilities and attuning yourself to a new working environment.

Chapters four, five and six offer advice about office politics, professional courtesy and career advancement.

Chapters seven, eight and nine fill in gaps between work and home with tips on travel, caring for your personal health and generating a professional image.

Chapter ten delves into the truly awful and mundane drudgeries of corporate existence: Reports, Meetings and Presentations. Unless you are a fan of the "Dilbert" comic strip, read at your own risk.

The intended audience is young professionals who have recently or are soon to finish their studies and venture into the great world beyond. Though the word "boardrooms" in the title and constant use of white-collar circumstances and phraseology throughout the text smacks of pretension and alludes to usefulness only by that demographic, such may not be entirely the case.

It seems obvious that the target readers for this book are young professionals just about to join the workforce (college kids), but that is not to say one thorough reading will not also benefit someone with experience. Specific chapters may actually be very useful or enlightening to an office veteran. Such people may view the first few chapters cynically, but they can skip to sections of the book that offer suggestions for getting along with coworkers or how to prepare for a trip or meeting.

While "Dorm rooms to Boardrooms" does come across as corporate-centric, many topics in the book, such as dealing with frustration, professional courtesies and discrimination in the workplace may easily apply in most occupations.

For soon-to-be college grads who think they're ready for today's workforce, a good perusal of "Dorm Rooms to Boardrooms" certainly can't hurt.