"Your Mindful Guide To Academic Success: Beat Burnout"

Gayle Kimball is Chico State Department of Sociology professor emerita. In her writing she blends "energy work" (using acupressure, meditation and visualization "to harness the power of the mind") with a deep passion for reaching students around the world who are trapped in conditions that make it a challenge to succeed.

Challenges may come from without (poverty, social discrimination) but also from within (procrastination, fear, aimlessness), and in her new book Kimball provides hundreds of resources that help students become overcomers, even activists. She also includes "the advice and experience of young people from various countries to discover how they succeed and to provide insight into the global youth culture…."

"Your Mindful Guide To Academic Success: Beat Burnout" ($9.99 in Amazon Kindle edition from Equality Press) focuses on cultivating good study skills, developing strategies for taking tests and writing essays, "clearing emotional blocks to success," using the internet to increase educational access, and joining youth movements around the world to "fight for a more just and equitable world."

Kimball draws on a wealth of  information about, for example, learning disabilities, "balancing the left and right sides of the body," positive self-talk, depression, being a student of color, and more. (The section on how to research is written by former Butte College librarian Morgan Brynnan.)

Kimball advises students to "structure regular time for exercise, socializing, quiet time, and volunteer work that you feel passionate about so you don't burn out. I'd also like you to think about the influence of sex-role socialization in your choice of major and career objectives. Try to think outside the typical, the normal. In a world that's increasingly global and unequal, my other hope is that you'll be an activist in whatever cause is most important to you."

There's a companion Facebook page called Test Success: How To Cope With Stress And Anxiety (http://bit.ly/2lzLEGR).

Kimball is scheduled to speak at a free workshop on "Mind Power To Achieve Your Goals" during the Emotional Tune-Up Seminar, sponsored by the Chico Area Recreation and Park District, Thursday, March 23 from 12:30-4:00 p.m. at Lakeside Pavilion, 2565 California Park Drive. For information contact host Gerald Darling at ymrducks@gmail.com.

Helping students, but not without controversy

Former Chico State University President Manuel Esteban characterizes business professor Curt DeBerg as “a nonconformist, irrepressible, blunt, and undeterred by bureaucratic hurdles.” Those qualities are very much in evidence in Professor DeBerg’s detailed account, “How High Is Up? The Rise, Fall, and Redemption Of A Sam M. Walton SIFE Fellow” ($24.95 in paperback from Memoir Books; also for Amazon Kindle).

Esteban encouraged Professor DeBerg’s efforts establishing a chapter of Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) on the Chico State campus. SIFE, writes DeBerg, is “one of Wal-Mart’s favorite nonprofit organizations,” a way for the corporation and its business sponsors to help college students practice free enterprise in their local communities, and also a way to train a future generation of leaders.

DeBerg advocated “service learning” which emphasized community support projects. That seemed a good fit with SIFE, and so DeBerg became a Sam Walton Fellow, named after the legendary founder of Wal-Mart.

His book details his adventures during his dozen or so years as a SIFE leader (Chico State teams became national champions and a force to be reckoned with), but DeBerg grew increasingly at odds with the organization, wanting it to be more accountable (the Fellows had little say), less Christian (and more inclusive) and less politically right-wing. As DeBerg explored his idea of SIFE teams helping less privileged high school students become entrepreneurs, there was a clash of goals, and egos, and he was kicked out.

Yet what DeBerg learned in SIFE helped him start Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship (SAGE), focusing on high schools. SIFE itself changed its name to “Enactus” and instituted some of the reforms DeBerg advocated. It’s a tangled tale, more “prickly” than this review would suggest, but ultimately a vision for what DeBerg calls “humanitarian capitalism.”

The author will be discussing his book at Lyon Books in Chico on Monday, May 5 at 7:00 p.m., and will be interviewed by Nancy Wiegman on Nancy’s Bookshelf Friday, May 9 at 10:00 a.m. on KCHO, Northstate Public Radio (91.7 FM).