My first taste of college life came from reading L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of the Island, where the eponymous heroine leaves her beloved Green Gables and goes away to college. Anne Shirley and her friends seamlessly blend challenging study with rewarding friendships as they stretch their wings and grow in the stately city of Kingsport.
As the bookish daughter of a college professor, I arrived on campus excited for an experience like Anne’s, adapted fairly easily (all things considered), and now treasure those years investigating the good, true, and beautiful.
I was well prepared for college and then graduate school afterward, and both enhanced my love for learning and reading in powerful ways. Through my six years of higher education, however, I’ve realized how little I really knew about reading at the college level as a high schooler, especially when it comes to literature.