Washington Lawyer - January/February 2019 - 38

WORTH READING

INSPIRING
ANECDOTES

FOR NAVIGATING
COLLEGE LIFE
D.C. Bar member Steve Roy Goodman has spent the
past eight years coaching families through the college
admissions process. His book, College Success Stories
That Inspire, contains anecdotes and advice to help law
students.
What made you write this book and who should
read it?
People regularly pull me aside at social events and
share stories about what happened to them in high
school, college, and graduate school. Often the
conversations include deeply personal anecdotes
about their admissions essays or particular college
or law school classes. It occurred to me that a group
of campus-related stories, brought to life by the
people who lived them, could be useful to students
navigating their future educational paths as well as
to families searching for ways to be helpful without
being too prescriptive.
Tell us more about the book.
College Success Stories That Inspire enables readers to
experience college life to the fullest by learning from
a variety of successful people - from many colleges
and universities - whose stories shared can help
others flourish during their own college years. These
memories open up a wide range of academic and
extracurricular possibilities. Stories about friendship
and camaraderie illustrate the lifelong value of
college experiences. Chapters include stories about
the unexpected, mistakes revisited, tough choices,
courage, and teachers and mentors.

Book cover, courtesy of Miniver Press; photo,
courtesy of Steve Roy Goodman

38 WASHINGTON LAWYER

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019

By Steve Roy Goodman

Tell us some of the stories readers would enjoy.
There are a few personal essays that might be of
particular interest to the D.C. Bar community. One
involves an attorney from Sri Lanka who made
his way to an LLM program at the University of
Pennsylvania Law School. His story includes a 4 a.m.
breakfast that indirectly led to a conversation with a
Nobel Prize winner. Another interesting story
involves a student at Knox College who concluded
in a C-plus paper that Plato's Republic was too unrealistic. In another story, a Smith College graduate
wrote about protesting the attorney general.
What do you know now that you wish you knew
when you were going through law school? Any
lessons for today's students?
I wish I had the courage to focus earlier. For some
reason, I have always been drawn to the field of
education. It would have been fun to get involved
with more education-related courses and clinics in
college and law school. The admissions process can
be very stressful for families and students.
Where can we find additional information on
navigating this process?
The site topcolleges.com has links to all sorts of
education articles. My first book, College Admissions
Together: It Takes a Family, explores family dynamics
and the admissions process. The show Higher
Education Today can be seen on television in both
Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Segments are
archived at youtube.com/user/gotouniversity.

http://www.topcolleges.com http://www.youtube.com/user/gotouniversity http://www.dcbar.org/

Washington Lawyer - January/February 2019

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