I once enjoyed academic advising. It was a genuine way to get to know my students outside of the classroom, and I believe that I was helpful. I looked forward to helping freshmen adjust to college or helping upper-classmen select electives that made sense to their career goals, their interests, and their passions. Please believe me: I once had a job that Yaro has! I promise.Now, I dread it.
From the student with the 4.0 gpa who admits without embarrassment that nothing interests her (“so I’ll take what works best for time”), to the student who complains that she shouldn’t have to take all these classes “just to teach first graders,” to the student who stresses that she needs to “get out as fast as possible,” a curious demand as she has “no freaking idea” what to do after she graduates, I wonder why we bother.
I find myself “explaining college.” I have to justify to Fur Weaving majors the courses in Fur Weaving. I have to explain that thinking Basket Weaving is cool isn’t enough credits for a minor. I mostly explain that I cannot waive requirements, overlook prerequisites and/or accept one course for two requirements. I no longer feel that I’m an advisor; I’m a talking catalog.
More and more students expect me to go into detail about my colleagues, asking, “What’s he like?” “Isn’t she a hard grader?” “Is he mean?” “Who’s the easier of these two?” My standard answer: "I don't know; I haven't taken that class."
Most of students don’t bother showing up, and the ones who do are our BEST students, that is, the most organized, most conscientious, the ambitious. The students who tend to schedule classes only at night and very very late in the afternoon rarely come in for advisement. Well, they do, but only after some huge issues show up on their rejected graduation applications.
Suggesting courses nowadays isn’t enough; more students expect me to design a schedule. It’s exhausting, especially after fashioning a good schedule to learn that it does not “work” because of employment, preferences, or other complications. The perfect schedule can’t work because “no Friday classes; my ride home leaves on Thursday.” Or it can’t work as the ideal class for a major meets when she takes Yoga. (“I have to do it here on campus because it’s free for students and I can’t afford it and I need it to stay sane.”) Or as it meets “too early,” for any class before 11:00 is, “Dude, that’s too early for me,” a wry confession that comes with an appropriately ironic smile. At least the student who schedules her academic career around yoga cares about something. At least the hipster ALWAYS drinking coffee who can’t wake up until noon has tried to understand himself. At least they come in.
Of course, academic advising comes in mid-October—a busy time for all of us, with midterm exams and essays stacked on our desks. The students must see their advisors so early because we register so early. Students do not know if they will pass the classes they’re taking, but they need to sign up NOW for the next classes in the sequences. Where I teach, we order the books first, have the students register, THEN we determine how many students will need to take each particular class.
Anyway, all I now tend to write in advising folders is either “on track” or “didn’t show.”
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....And the `bots finally dig their way into the comments thread.
ReplyDeleteWe've become significant enough to get a bot! Wow!
ReplyDeleteWelcome to my world, TPP.
ReplyDeleteI can't comprehend the lack of initiative, nay common sense, that so many students exhibit. My undergrad "advising" consisted of the catalog and a single sheet of paper with "required" courses and pick-lists of electives. The students I see panic and run crying to the Dean when I tell them, "No, I won't decide for you which to take at 10:00 and which to take at 11:00; Dr. Chris teaches Intro to This during both time slots and Dr. Kim teaches General That during both time slots, too. You have to take both of them. Make a decision!"
Wait, I'm confused. Isn't anything that happens on this page evidence of our insignificance and forthcoming demise?
ReplyDeleteOhhhh....you are siiiiiinging myyyy sooooongggg....
ReplyDeleteTPP, I'm living in that world too. I don't expect them to want to take 8 am classes or miss their sports practice. They can complain about it to their friends, just like I did as a student. But for God's sake, I'm an adult, their professor and advisor. They should care enough that want to act like good students.
ReplyDeleteI'm not an academic adviser, but when any of my students complain to me about their schedule, I tell them that they have much more control over when they're on campus than I do. I'd also prefer not to have to be in a classroom at 8.30 a.m., but sometimes that's just how it goes.
ReplyDeleteMy own undergrad experience was similar to that of Sawyer in Student Services. There was no-one to hold my hand and walk me through my subject choices and my timetable. I was expected to read the student handbook closely in order to determine the requirements for my major and for graduation, and to arrange my schedule on my own
This is why I won't even talk to my advisees until they have made out their schedule with not only first choices but second ones.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I have is that they go in after the fact and add and drop whatever they like without consulting me.
I find it interesting that advising seems to have become a 'standard' (or even required) thing at universities. When I did my undergrad degree (almost two decades ago), there was no advising meetings required/expected at any stage of the four-year process. They just included a big book of university/faculty/program regulations along with the copies of the course calendars they mailed out. It was expected that students could figure out these things for themselves and register themselves properly.
ReplyDelete(Also, I've come to feel that 8:30am classes are rather unreasonable, especially at a commuter university, given what science now knows about young adults' circadian rhythms -- i.e., that sleep cycles tend to naturally skew late at that age.)
Now you see yet another evil of the child-centered, over-supervised, wall-to-wall-scheduled, helicopter-parent upbringing epidemic among our students. They can't make any decision, no matter how trivial, because they've never been allowed to make a decision, ever. They've been so thoroughly conditioned to relinquish anything resembling responsibility to their superiors, they have learned to be afraid to make decisions.
ReplyDeleteThese people will be running the economy that pays my pension. Just great.
From the student with the 4.0 gpa who admits without embarrassment that nothing interests her (“so I’ll take what works best for time”)
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I think you graduated too long ago to really understand what it's like now. I also say this to your 'bafflement' @ the student who wants to get out despite lacking direction. You can hate school and still realize that you're hopeless if you leave without a degree. We are trapped, and even if we don't hate school, it's still natural to want to be free when you feel so much pressure to stay.
Really? Trapped into a costly education that people in other countries would kill for? Into one that many people in this country don't have access to? Make the best of it, kiddo. Or drop out and go to vocational school -- electricians and plumbers still make good money -- and don't tell me you have to please your parents, because you are an adult. I have no sympathy whatsoever for your "entrapment." Move over and let someone else use the resource wisely.
ReplyDeleteI remember realizing, when I was scrapping through my fancy prep school on financial aid and 3 jobs, that some kids could merely take up space because their parents paid full tuition. Oh, how I hated them.
I already got my degree and have tons of student loan debt, like almost everyone in my generation. Going for grad because I've been told by multiple professors that I "just got a degree in pumping gas" and that grads in my major were being recruited into jobs stalking shelves at Safeway, etc. Still trapped, going for grad I guess, because I don't really want my future children to have to pay for lunch w/a poor card.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I doubt many of you will really be able to understand, because you're clearly oriented to the University setting and teaching model. You won't have wondered what it's like to do work that's both useless (unless you count 'enabling you to perform better on an arbitrary test that benefits no one' as a "use") AND boring at the same time, because it's the only way you feel like you can "make progress" towards bettering yourself. Also, when you were 21, I doubt you were quite so worried about how poor you would be at age 31 as today's 21yos are.
I mean, if anyone was really in college to learn rather then get credentials, they'd just sit in on classes. Nothing you say will ever be worth 3k/quarter in knowledge.
Wow Meh, can you describe the gun held to your head when you chose the major to prepare you for "useless" work based upon an "imaginary demand."
ReplyDeleteHave economic circumstances changed? Yup.
Pretty much like they have ever generation.
Some people are still able to adapt and thrive.
Others, not so much.
Perhaps part of the challenge you face is the free floating aggression you are showing here.
Generally, bosses aren't too keen on 'tude.
Or maybe your chosen moniker is a bit to descriptive. Difficult to say if apathy is more or less undesirable than aggression.
Just sayin' ...
@Meh. My venting here was about advising,not college in general. But I must say that despite having graduated "too long" ago for you to listen to my advice, I do believe that I'm sensitive to those students who want help. No one here was a poor as I was, and I will admit that I became a different type of student by the end of my long college career than I was when I started, but I was for a time a student more concerned with vocation than the academy. Just because I'm old doesn't mean that I have forgotten that. Being old means too that I've had twenty years of experience of helping young people in all types of "tough situations," but you don't seem to think that that matters. (Just because things are bad now for your generation doesn't mean that these are the worst times ever.) Anyway: First, the student who wants to get out as quickly as possible is not helping herself by not having some purpose, goal, or plan once she does. No one will hire her simply because she got out of college in three years, or four, or five. Second, the 4.0 student will get interviews, but that "Meh" attitude of hers will not inspire confidence or faith. People who hire aren't looking for smart people who hated school. As Aware points out, they prefer people who make the most of their opportunities.
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