The Advisor Diaries

Dear Diary,

In my prior life as a director of advising for a community college district, I met a father of one of our entering students hanging around the table at orientation. He was leafing through the information on our college and programs.

“We just moved here and I’m bringing my daughter to register for her first semester.” He added, “She’s still in high school, but I want her to take classes here to get prepared for university. She wants to be a software developer.” I expressed my appreciation for his concern and prepared myself for the typical “hovering” parent conversation that usually followed such introductions, but this was different. He kicked the table leg and shuffled through the papers.

“I’m a little embarrassed, because I never graduated from high school. We’re from the Philippines and I come from a large family. I needed to help support the younger ones.”

I responded, “Well, it’s not too late. You know? You can take classes without having a high school diploma and we even have a GED class that’s free.”

“No kiddin’?” His face was lit up like Christmas. “So I could go to school with my daughter? Honey!” he yelled over the din, motioning to his wife. “Come here and listen to this.”

I continued to explain to them both the process for enrollment and the programs we offered and how this was surely do-able even for people working day jobs.

Without much more encouragement, the entire family sat for placement tests, registered for classes and trotted off to the bookstore preparing for their first classes.

Today, the daughter is comfortably progressing towards her bachelor’s in computer science, the father has become a registered nurse and the mother has been accepted into the nursing program as well.

This experience taught me to remember that every person coming to an orientation is a potential student and a person worthy of my attention and expertise. Judging the book by the cover, I might have trotted out the old speech to “helicopter parents” about this being for “The Student” and how they need to butt out.

By chance, accident, or insight I didn’t do that, and what a difference it made for us all.

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