One spring, I had the honor and pleasure of advising undergraduate students who are in their first or second years of college. Though several of them came to their fifteen-minute advising appointment extremely well prepared, most did not.
Below, you will find a list of ten things NOT to do when you are being advised.
- Don’t show up. That’s right, several students were no shows for their appointments. (That wasn’t really a surprise, but it was disappointing.)
- Come in and say, “Okay, tell me what I need to take next semester.” Whatever happened to being responsible for your own learning? Check out your four-year plan to see what courses are typically taken and in what order.
- Make excuse after excuse why you have withdrawn from class after class — and still expect that a professor might give you an override to get into a full class. Yes, there are definitely some reasons to withdraw from classes, but when it becomes a habit, it begins to reflect poorly on your ability to manage your schedule. For every class from which you withdraw, there probably was another student who wanted to get in before the semester started, but could not because the class was full.
- Spend more time looking for ways to avoid taking your core classes than actually taking the classes. Everyone in the university needs to take a core of similar classes. Even you. And don’t expect that your advisor will tell you “which ones are the easy ones.”
- Don’t look in the college catalog to see what will be required for your major; expect your advisor to know all the details off the top of his or her head. It surprised me that several students “knew” they wanted to major in a certain subject, but did not have any idea what courses would be required for the major, or that a certain GPA was required.
- Don’t check out the online registration service from your college to see when your earliest registration date and time are. Find out when your registration time is, and make your advising appointment before this time, so that you can register at the earliest possible moment. Many classes fill quickly, and the earlier you can register, the more likely you can get in.
- Expect your advisor to be able to counsel you on which major you should choose AND help you choose classes for next semester, all during your allotted 15 minutes. Choosing a major is an important, perhaps life-changing, decision. Make an appointment with a professor or advisor in the majors you are interested in far ahead of the advisement period.
- Give your advisor a blank stare when he or she asks you, “So what steps are you taking to bring up your grade point average?” As the old saying goes, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Many majors have minimum GPAs required for admittance to their programs; make a plan to exceed that minimum by as much as you can. Utilize the many services your university has to offer for study skills, tutoring, etc.
- Respond to text messages while your advisor is talking. Come on, the appointment is only 15 minutes. Couldn’t that wait? And if it couldn’t, would it be so hard to say, “Please excuse me for just a moment. There’s something urgent I need to do”?
- Leave your iPod earbuds in your ears so you can continue to listen to your music (and use your pencil and pen as drumsticks on the desk) while the appointment is going on. Seriously. As a 20-year career educator and parent of four, I don’t shock easily, but the rudeness of this took me aback. And it happened not once, but twice, with two different students. At least neither of them hesitated at complying when I asked them to focus on our meeting rather than their iPods.
Now, it probably sounds like I don’t ever want to advise students again. Not quite. . .
During my “dream appointment,” and I did have one of these, this is what happened:
A young woman walked up to me confidently, put out her hand to shake mine, and said, “Good morning, my name is Katey. Thanks for meeting with me today.” She and I walked back to my office, chatting about where she is from and why she chose her major. Katey sat down, reached into her backpack, and took out her planner. She turned to a page where she had marked up the core requirements sheet with classes she’d already taken and highlighted those she was considering for the next semester. Katey turned serious when she noted, “I know I need to take the second English class in the series, but I looked online, and the classes are already full.” Hmmm. This was intriguing! She had done some significant preparation for this meeting. We worked together to come up with an alternate plan that took into account what to do when Plan A wasn’t going to work. We looked ahead to required courses to her major and selected two that are prerequisites for many other courses. We briefly discussed how she could get involved on one or two campus organizations related to her major. And the whole meeting took less than ten minutes.
If only there were more Kateys! Maybe there can be if students can know what to expect of the advising appointment.
For another “what NOT to do,” see How to Fail a Class Without Really Trying.
What tips would you offer to help a college student have a successful advising appointment?
[Adapted from my Listening Matters blog, March 2008]
I would be lying if I said I have been fully prepared for all of my advisement appointments. However, over the past four years I have learned how to do things right. As I have grown as an individual I have learned that I need to take responsibility for my life and my future, starting with my education. I would recommend to students to print off your major course requirements online which are located on the Georgia Southern website. You can also look up which courses are going to be offered the next semester for your major so you can know what you need to take. I have learned that the resources are there for us as young adults to plan out our schedules and the advisors are there for any questions we may have or guidance we may need. Although it took me a couple of years to figure it out, I am sure glad I did!
I have to say that I’ve experienced frustration going the other. Not everyone is a Katey obviously, and more than a few are the other extreme. But there are also those of us in the middle–the ones whose mamas raised us to put away the iPod and to turn off the phone but who might miss a course or two along the way.While I was at UF I was glued to that college catalog–it was my second Bible when registration came around. Every semester I would present my course plan to my advisor and make sure I was on the right trackSomehow, I managed to miss the fact that I had to take some outside electives for my major. Up went the plan in my junior year. I suddenly was having to cram them into a pretty full schedule. How I wished that when I sat in his office presenting my plan (chock full of core courses I might add) and asked “How does this look? Am I missing anything?” he had mentioned those outside electives. I will be the first to say that part of the fault lies with me for missing them in the first place, but isn’t that the reason that systems like this are in place? Because we’re all human and we miss things?
Working with the Katey-type student was always a joy for me at Centennial College. Not surprisingly, the Kateys in my courses also tended to be the students who: handed in their assignments on deadline; followed the assignment’s specifications (or exceeded them); participated in class; had highly developed interpersonal skills with classmates and faculty and ended up getting solid recommendations and plum internships. I had the pleasure (and pain) of working with both types of students. The ones who cultivated the habit of being helpless (“I didn’t know I had to take THAT elective;” or “Nobody told me I had to enrol by that date.”) were the most frustrating. But, that’s the joy of being an educator.