Bright College Years

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“Bright College Years is a wistful trip in a time machine, back to those college years so filled with fun, friendship, and heartache. Travel there with Pessin to a Yale of the early 80s, when a handful of friends thought ever-so-briefly they owned the world.”
—Scott Johnston, Yale ’82, author of Amazon bestseller, Campusland

“‘How bright will seem through memory’s haze, those happy golden bygone days’: Nailed it! Bright College Years is smart, funny, sweet, bittersweet, heartwarming, heartbreaking, and most of all meaningful—everything college typically is, in short, as well as the life in the ‘real world’ that then follows. A perfect mix of sentimentality, profundity, and college hijinks, with great insight as to how we all go from who we were to who we are.”
—Scott Smilen, Yale ’84

“Bright College Years shows that although times change, key truths about the college experience remain the same. It is witty and lighthearted in just the right measures, yet undaunted by the inevitable bleaker moments one faces during those metamorphic years—reminding us that those bleak moments are often the most transformational. Philosophical probing meets the nostalgia of memory in this timeless story, and you will relish the journey back to your own formative days as you immerse yourself in it.”
—Lauren Williamson, Connecticut College ’23

“This delightful novel brought me right back to campus, to those simultaneously halcyon and turbulent days, with that delicious mixture of nostalgia, promise, and regret, when changing the world was as urgently pressing as whether your football team beat their football team. Fortunately ours usually beat theirs.”
—Richard Landes, Harvard alum, author of Could the Whole World Be Wrong?

“Bravo! Bright College Years is a clever, humorous, touching, and thought-provoking story that perfectly captures the essence of college life. It beautifully portrays that period of time and how it shapes one’s future. It’s both nostalgic and timeless.”
—Steven Skybell, Yale ’84, Tevye in the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof, www.stevenskybell.com

“This funny, moving, deeply philosophical novel captures the spirit of Yale, moving seamlessly between past and present and illuminating both. Yale of the 1980s comes alive as these endearing characters navigate their studies, friendships, relationships and, ultimately, their future–and our own.”
—Courtney Sender, Yale ’10, author of In Other Lifetimes All I’ve Lost Comes Back to Me

“At times side-splittingly comical and at others deeply poignant, Andrew Pessin’s Bright College Years deftly traverses the ups and downs, joy and pain, and triumphs and failures of a group of young adults grappling with the weighty questions of who they are and what they want to become. And Pessin’s encyclopedic knowledge–not only of 1980s Yale and New Haven, but also of world events and rock-n-roll–firmly plants the reader in the heart of the protagonists’ journey. (Much to my delight, I lived my college years all over again!) But perhaps Pessin’s most important message is that, despite differences in color, belief system, and upbringing, we are all infinitely capable of love and understanding as evidenced by the enduring friendships formed at college. Though fast and fun, this book is serious too, reminding us to forever honor the people and institutions that have shaped us for the better.”
—Julia Usher, Yale ’84, Master Sugar Artist, juliausher.com

“Andrew Pessin’s uproarious and touching Bright College Years centers around a group of semi-kindred spirits, attending Yale University in the early 1980s that calls itself the ‘Meatheads’ and lives by the motto emblazoned on one of their bedroom doors: FASTER LOUDER HIGHER MORE. The Meatheads are a rowdy, reckless, and big-hearted group of boozers, stoners, and prospectors for love who, despite their varying degrees of meatheadedness, excel in the classroom, head up school organizations, attend Allen Ginsberg readings and Gloria Steinem lectures, debate the merits of Erich Segal’s prose, argue over world events, and the possibility of nuclear holocaust, as well as the privilege of going to Yale when their increasingly hefty tuitions might be used for a greater cause. Pessin’s story, however, is more than a Rules of Attraction redux. He has imbued his novel with an air of poignancy, an ineluctability, a word he uses throughout. Reading Bright College Years, one has the sense that the timeless and comforting rhythms of life at Yale as an undergrad, the shortest, gladdest years of life, the unlikely friendships forged, the sins committed and forgiven, are set to end, and when they do, the Meatheads are blindsided by the beautiful and heart-wrenching realization that the trajectory of their lives will never be the same.”
—James Campbell, Yale ’84, author of The Final Frontiersman and Braving It

“Hilarious, moving, richly-written, thought-provoking and replete with wisdom seeping through the narrative, it felt almost like Pessin had had my own college experience, as what he described was fantastically familiar. The novel captures what it’s like to look back on one’s college years from a more mature perspective, to remove the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and remember it as it was—and somehow reconcile who we’ve become with who we once were. A must read.” 
—Adam Kligfeld, Columbia ’95

“Andrew Pessin has written the rarest of novels: a witty page-turner that’s also philosophically astute. Brimming with well-drawn characters and a spot-on evocation of New Haven and college life in the early 1980s, the book will make you laugh and think. Enjoyable and serious, this novel is a delight.”
—Eric Adler, University of Maryland

“Bright College Years is about many things, really, but most of all about friendship, which is really at the heart of the college experience. You’ll feel yourself hanging out with this gang as they form the relationships that carry on, that in many ways determine our trajectories through life; you’ll feel a part of their bonding experiences, the fun and the challenges and the heartbreak that make us who we are, the individuals we become through our connections with other people. ‘If that’s not life,’ as the subtitle has it, indeed.”
—Jeffrey Oppenheim, Princeton alum

“A vision of what higher education could be, once was, perhaps could be again, a mix between the classroom and real relationships, with raw honesty, in the pursuit of ‘full frontal truth’—and a lot of fun at the same time. You’ll enjoy this book.”
—William Jacobson, Cornell University

“If Pessin changed the location, the building names, and the characters’ names, this could be the story of my own college years—and the years after, when all the implications of and patterns set by hard work, tough lessons, care-free moments, and tight friendships made throughout echo their patterns into the present, for better and, all too often, for worse. Bright College Years hits home in all the ways a great book should.”  
—Jordan Frank, Dartmouth alum

“Reading this book I felt as if someone were walking behind me at Yale and giving me a running narrative of my life. Rich in salient detail, unapologetically individualistic, yet completely relatable. Such an assortment of characters with very different lives, yet their experience of Yale unifies them or shows that they are all part of humanity far ahead of being individuals. Film students distinguish closed form from open form, but this book sits astride both forms, pointing to the shortest, gladdest years of life that end upon graduation only to then offer glimpses of life integral. In Greek we say: I wish I had my eventual wisdom before I turned wise. Can there be a more accurate description of our years there? For lack of a better phrase, Pessin is a New Haven Plutarch. I loved this book.”  
—Petros S., Yale alum

 5.0 out of 5 stars “Poignant and Fun”
“Like attending a reunion years later, reading Bright College Years places you in that singular spot where hopes, expectations, disappointments and so much else bubbles up in your young self. Meaningful, funny and beautifully written, the novel celebrates the friendship and purpose that college inspires, no matter your individual experience.” —Pamela Gwyn Kripke, author of At the Seams and And Then You Apply Ice

 5.0 out of 5 stars “Pitch Perfect” (Amazon)
“I loved Bright College Years. It is at turns laugh out loud funny, thoughtfully reflective, and deeply nostalgic. It’s like reliving your formative years, but with the perspective of age and experience. It’s a book that I suspect is even more fun to experience with old friends. The right combination of fun and thought provoking.” —Peter K.