Through a different lens

Michelle Bender

Author tells students to learn from experience

A Hope in the Unseen, the summer reading assignment for incoming freshman, signs books in the campus book store last night. ELIZABETH MYERS | DAILY KENT STATER”>

Ron Suskind, author of A Hope in the Unseen, the summer reading assignment for incoming freshman, signs books in the campus book store last night. ELIZABETH MYERS | DAILY KENT STATER

Credit: John Proppe

“Challenge authority” was the advice Ron Suskind gave to an audience of freshmen in his speech last night.

Suskind, author of A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League, spoke about his book at the M.A.C. Center.

“(College) is designed for you to challenge authority,” he said. “It’s designed for you to challenge your professors. Do it at every opportunity.”

Suskind’s book was the reading assignment for incoming freshmen this summer. The non-fiction book follows Cedric Jennings from an impoverished inner-city school to the prestigious Brown University. He is now a social worker in Washington, D.C., where he handles the toughest of cases.

“Experience,” Suskind said, “is the only teacher you can trust without question.”

He said no one knows what is going to be ahead of him or her in life, but everyone has to rely on his or her individual destiny.

“I think he is one of the most effective journalists writing today,” academic program director Anne Reid said.

Contact graduate affairs reporter Michelle Bender at [email protected].