An orientation course at an Ohio college was designed to help college freshmen adjust to the values of a new living/learning community, using personal journal writing to develop the students' coping skills. Life issues considered essential in adult development theory--identity, intimacy, autonomy, and competency--serve as a background for the students' journals, as does Nancy Schlossberg's "Counseling Adults in Transition," which the students are asked to consult. Students are required to read three assigned books about growing up, and to submit a 2,500-word final paper analyzing their journals. The overriding theme that emerges from the journals is the need of freshmen placed in a new environment to gain a sense of self as quickly as possible. In their attempts to adjust, the students endeavor to hold on to the past even as they try to adjust to the present. Their writings reflect this quandary. The one element that rarely finds its way into the journals is their primary reason for being in college: the academic factor. Examining the three assigned readings in terms of transitions and coping strategies, students can see their own lives in the same terms. Gradually, journal entries should become more specific and methodical in self-examination. The hope is that the journal experience helps the students to grow as they move from one stage of adulthood to another. (NKA)