The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (Morality and Society Series) [Paperback]

Tim Clydesdale (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0226110664 | ISBN-13: 978-0226110660

Wild parties, late nights, and lots of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Many assume these are the things that define an American teenager’s first year after high school. But the reality is really quite different. As Tim Clydesdale reports in The First Year Out, teenagers generally manage the increased responsibilities of everyday life immediately after graduation effectively. But, like many good things, this comes at a cost.

Tracking the daily lives of fifty young people making the transition to life after high school, Clydesdale reveals how teens settle into manageable patterns of substance use and sexual activity; how they meet the requirements of postsecondary education; and how they cope with new financial expectations. Most of them, we learn, handle the changes well because they make a priority of everyday life. But Clydesdale finds that teens also stow away their identities—religious, racial, political, or otherwise—during this period in exchange for acceptance into mainstream culture. This results in the absence of a long-range purpose for their lives and imposes limits on their desire to understand national politics and global issues, sometimes even affecting the ability to reconstruct their lives when tragedies occur.

The First Year Out is an invaluable resource for anyone caught up in the storm and stress of working with these young adults.

(20070102)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Tim Clydesdale has done a remarkable job of getting inside the minds and lives of American teenagers. I know of no other study that provides as rich and up-to-date insights into the decisions teenagers make as they leave high school and enter the work force and college. The stories are riveting. The candid confessions about doubts and anxieties are sobering. The First Year Out is an example of sociological research at its best."--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University, author of The Next Wave:  How Young Adults Are Shaping American Religion

(Robert Wuthnow 20060919)

“This is an excellent book, with scholarship and writing of the kind that more sociologists ought to be producing. It is exceptional in its longitudinal and qualitative focus on this life-course transition, its fascinating big-picture story, its consistent and understandable plot-line, and its counter-intuitive overturning of big cultural stereotypes about life after high school. Clydesdale’s observations about stability and managing daily life tasks are fascinating, and provide important contributions to our substantive understanding of this important piece of social life."--Christian Smith, author of Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers

(Christian Smith )

"A high;y readable, compassionate, and empathetic look at the lives of young people as they leave high school and enter universities, colleges, vocational schools, and employment. . . . [It] should be of interest to life course, youth, and education scholars alike."

(Wolfgang Lehmann Canadian Journal of Sociology )

"Clydesdale has written an engaging and accessible book about how American teens experience their school life, family life, work life, religious life, peer life, and leisure time. It is filled with delicious nuggets of information as well as thoughtful (and sometimes surprising) claims about who American teens are, and what, if anything, ''we'' can do about it. . . . This book has much to recommend it and I encourage educators to read it in order to gain some insight about the worldview of the people they intend to educate. Also, I would not hesitate to assign it in an upper-division sociology of adolescence class."

(Robert C. Bulman Teaching Sociology )

"Clydesdale provides directives for all educators (faculty, residence life, student activities, career services) who work with first year students. . . . His is an interesting voice in the dialogue on how incoming students are changing."

(Katie Beres NACADA Journal )

"Worthwhile reading for a number of different audiences. It is relevant to educators, as its vivid descriptions of youth culture will inform, and likely challenge, pedagogical practices. The depiction of youth culture will also be helpful to social practitioners and others engaged in direct practice with young people in their late teens. . . . Finally, scholars of American Culture will find it a fascinating reflection on mainstream culture."

(Sarah Taylor Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare )

"Cydesdale''s impressive study yielded a rich and entertainingly told story of what young people are up to in their first year beyond the family nest. It is a superb book, convincing in its ethnographic realism, surprising in its findings, insightful in its analyses and discussion."

(Paul Attewell Qualitative Sociology )

About the Author

Tim Clydesdale is associate professor of sociology at the College of New Jersey.

Product Details

• Paperback: 239 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (May 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226110664
• ISBN-13: 978-0226110660
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will shake you up, May 17, 2008

By 

Michael Robertson (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (Morality and Society Series) (Paperback)

Much writing on higher education falls into predictable categories, such as moralistic (sometimes voyeuristic) screeds about debased student culture or high-minded praise of the transformative power of the liberal arts. Tim Clydesdale's "The First Year Out" is neither of these. Instead, it's a rigorous, engaging, beautifully written work of social science that tracks a representative sample of teens through the last year of high school and first year of college.

Clydesdale's empirically based analysis is unassailable, but no one is likely to be comfortable with all his conclusions. Contrary to the moralists, Clydesdale reports that most students are onlookers, not participants, in the hedonism sensationalized by novelist Tom Wolfe. Dashing the hopes of liberal arts idealists, he demonstrates that few students are willing to wrestle with fundamental questions about identity, belief or politics during their first year out. Clydesdale argues that we need to shed preconceptions, "lower our lofty ideals," and engage students as they are, not as we imagine or wish them to be. Everyone involved in higher education--professors, administrators, student affairs professionals--should read "The First Year Out."

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book full of surprising insights, May 7, 2007

By 

J.&V. Grisham (Newtown, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (Morality and Society Series) (Paperback)

A very enjoyable read that dispels many of our myths about what goes on during that first year of college. Dr. Clydesdale's book is both scholarly and fun, and we finished the book feeling like we had a much better understanding of the complexity of the lives of "real" teens. His central thesis, that teens' values are not so much undermined as they are underutilized, is very useful. Specifically, his research demonstrates an interesting pattern by which students come to college with a given religious identity and values, then store these in what he calls an "identity lockbox," where they remain for the duration of their college years both unchallenged and unaccessed. This is a remarkable and important insight, and provides readers with a powerful tool for understanding the lives of first year students. As Christian workers and non-specialists we found this book very accessible and would recommend it to anyone who works with teens.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He really knows college freshmen!, May 16, 2008

By 

Daniel W. Crofts (Southampton, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School (Morality and Society Series) (Paperback)

Tim Clydesdale's book, The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens After High School (University of Chicago Press, 2007) demands the close attention of all who teach at the post-secondary level. The author, a sociologist, has interviewed in depth a large cohort of high school seniors and college freshmen. He seeks to understand how they see themselves--and how they see the role of course-related study in their lives.

Clydesdale has discovered many things that college and university faculty may find challenging and even upsetting. He finds most students "culturally inoculated against intellectual curiosity and creative engagement." They are preoccupied instead by the pursuit of "happiness and fulfillment" through "personal relationships and individual consumption."

While Clydesdale strips away illusions, he also provides a foundation from which to rethink the ways that faculty might better approach students. This book is academic social science at its best. Everyone who teaches at the college or university level should read The First Year Out.