Self-education has been a trend in books, podcasts, reality television, and social media for a long time, and is only growing – for university students, navigating the transition between high school and adult life can be overwhelming, to say the least, with no clear guidebook.
Building communication skills can be the hardest part of entering adult life, and it can affect both relationships and a student’s emotional well-being – both personally and professionally.
Whether you’re 18, 28 or 58, these four books can help fill the gaps in self-education – and they’re all free to access online at the Western Sydney University library:
The Barefoot Investor
Scott Pape, author of The Barefoot Investor, makes financial literacy understandable at any level, for any adult, whether they are studying or working, or both. Using farming as a metaphor, the book details how you plant, grow, and harvest your financial security for the future.
With the current cost-of-living crisis, students would be asking themselves these questions – ones that the book addresses: How do we keep our savings instead of spending on pretty trinkets? How do we prepare and save for disaster while still socialising and having fun?
My Blob Feelings Workbook: A Toolkit for Exploring Emotions!
This interactive workbook allows the reader to better express and understand emotions: becoming more self-aware of your feelings and tracking them over time can help identify triggers that lead to low moods, as well as help find the root causes of anxiety or recognise periods of depression.
More elaborate than a typical mood tracker, the ‘blobs’ that personify emotions throughout the book include pensiveness, remorse, vigilance, trust, submission, grief, and amazement.
The Courage to be Disliked
The Japanese phenomenon that shows you how to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness. Where the previously mentioned Blob Feelings Workbook allows you to explore your own emotions over time, The Courage to be Disliked explores people’s relationships with each other – such as friends, family, and partners.
It both relates to and helps adults, particularly uni students, as the book discusses being from a close-knit environment, such as a hometown or small family, and moving to a new and different place filled with people of all interests – like meeting classmates and new faces on campus.
How to Talk to Absolutely Anyone: Confident Communication for Work, Life and Relationships
Communication is vital to any degree – whether it’s screen and media, journalism, public relations, or any job, for that matter. Whether writing reports, giving presentations, mentoring others, or talking to classmates, or co-workers, How to Talk not only helps students build strong communication skills but also delves into such areas as social anxiety.
No matter what level of confidence you have – whether you’re a natural extravert or sitting with your anxiety in the bathroom at a party, you are taken through all possible aspects of interaction, so both young adults studying at university, or older, can read the book, or skip to the sections that they’re unsure about – the parts that they feel will help them as they move through life.
So, whether you’re a student at uni or working – or both – make sure to take advantage of all the resources at the library, particularly those sources, both in print and online, that Western Sydney University has to offer – because an adult never stops learning new skills.
