REAL WORLD ADVICE FOR GRADUATING SENIORS

All too many students graduate from college uncertain about career choices and without the practical tools and know-how they need to succeed as adults.

To help students with the transition from college to the work world, Peter Wallace, associate professor of business administration, has written a second edition of his popular book Life 101: Real-World Advice For Graduating College Seniors (iUniverse™ Star 2007).

With the wisdom acquired during 35 years of internationally-accomplished business experience and nearly a decade of teaching, Wallace hopes to provide clarity and direction for a new generation of successful business people. 

The mission of his book is simple, explains Wallace: “to provide an understandable framework for making the transition from college life to professional life.”

Wallace shares proven keys to professional and personal success through that journey called life, including the following tips:

• Borrow wisely. In these days of student debt and meager first incomes, it’s easy to rely on credit cards, but many students have no idea about financing’s true costs. 
   
• Be unsure. Less than 15 percent of new grads have a passion for some occupation, with most of us having chosen the liberal arts in college to hone our social and intellectual skills en route to a bachelor’s. “These are the students who should start out by doing something they really enjoy,” Wallace said.
  
  
• Embrace budgets. If you can avoid having a car at first, and split housing costs with a roommate, all the better, as your starting income is likely to be a puny number. “By the time you pay rent and utilities, there’s little left, and there’s no cafeteria card in the real world,” he said. 

Just released, Life 101: Real-World Advice For Graduating College Seniors is available at the Stonehill Bookstore (508-565-1716) or online at http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/qsearchresults.asp as a paperback or Adobe eBook.  Be sure to ask for the 2007 edition of the book.

About the Author:

Peter C. Wallace, associate professor of Business Administration, earned a  B.A. from the University of Rochester, an M.B.A. from New York University, and completed the Senior International Management Program at Harvard Business School.  He went on to serve as an officer in the Coast Guard from 1965 to 1969.

Wallace began his business career at General Motors Corporation and became head of General Motors European car sales operations in the 1980s. After holding positions in several other American and International companies, he retired from his position as senior vice president of the World Directories unit at ITT Corporation in 1997.  Wallace began teaching at Stonehill in 2000.

He and his wife of nearly 36 years, Annabelle, have traveled extensively and have lived in Switzerland, Belgium and Brazil. Through his international business affiliations and travel, he has learned to speak five languages.

With the exception of the two years that Wallace and his wife lived in Belgium, they have made Hingham, Mass. their home since 1980.  They have two sons, Spencer, 33 and Terrence, 28.

11/27/07