By Dylan Hass
Photography by Candance Sweet
Sending your child off to college can be a challenging and emotional time in your life. Setting aside the staggering financial burden higher education requires in today’s day and age, there are also many unexpected complications that come with watching your teenager transition from the sheltered world of living at home to the training ground for adulthood that is the college experience. This can be a harrowing and difficult time for even the most emotionally mature, emotionally prepared teenager, as the college life quickly proves to be more complicated than it is stereotypically portrayed. Most new college students are experiencing their first taste of independent life and independent responsibilities that are new and many times overwhelming.
Having worked in student relations at multiple universities for over ten years, Kelci Lynn Lucier is intimately familiar with these challenges facing new college students.
“College is not simply a practice ground for the ‘real world’ that awaits the student after graduation,” as she puts it, “these students are facing ‘real world’ problems on their own, many for the first time.”
College is expected to be academically challenging, however what is often left out when preparing students for the collegiate experience is the fact that college life itself can be daunting, filled with unexpected challenges ranging from new interpersonal relationships and new financial responsibilities to philosophical differences with professors and academic advisors. The unprepared student can be easily discouraged if left to his or her own devices exclusively.
Lucier has made it her business to help students and parents navigate these unexpected challenges of college life. She has spent years serving as the “College Life Expert” on the website About.com, authoring web articles and blogs on topics to assist floundering students who may be concerned about how to handle a failing grade or how to succeed when faced with a difficult, tenured professor. She covers the kinds of topics the student may be uncomfortable otherwise seeking advice upon. She is also the co-creator of “The Parent Handbook”, a website where she contributes blog topics designed to address similar issues from the parents’ perspective, a need that Kelci recognized from the volume of parents who began finding their way to her articles on About.com.
Kelci Lynn Lucier will have her first book “College Stress Solutions” published in April 2014. College Stress Solutions is targeted towards helping the new college student deal with the unforeseen stresses of college life. Based upon her experiences working with students over the years, Lucier breaks down college stresses into eight major concerns and addresses each in a way that speaks directly to the student seeking help. Specifically, she addresses common academic, financial, personal, physical, social, emotional, family, and internal stresses.
Kelci Lynn Lucier is a local author and freelance educator who specializes in helping parents and teenagers prepare for and cope with the complications of the collegiate experience. For more information about Lucier visit her website kelcilynn.com.
