The Advisor Diaries

Dear Diary,

We currently don’t have the technology to allow our students to register for their courses online so every spring, each student is required to meet with one of the Academic Advisors in our office to choose their courses. Until I encountered “Daniel”, I couldn’t decide if this was a good or a bad thing.

When Daniel came into my office a year ago the start of our meeting was quite promising – Daniel, unlike most of his colleagues, came prepared with a list of courses and a completed timetable. He knew what he wanted to take! Hallelujah!
As I looked over his selections and started reconciling them with his core, major, and minor requirements my spirit slowly sank.
“Daniel,” I said, “You’re going into your third year at this school, is that right?”
“Yep.”
“You are still a Physical Education Major and History Minor, right?”
“Yep.”
“Daniel,” (*trying* not to sound as exasperated as I felt) “Not one of the courses you have chosen is a Phys-ed course. Or a History course. None of them even count towards your core!”
*Silence*
“Do you understand why this is a problem?”
“Nope. Those are the courses I’m interested in.”

What followed was a 15 minute discussion of why, exactly, it doesn’t work for him to take an entire year of electives if he wants to graduate in four years. After that, we talked about why none of the courses in his chosen programs don’t interest him. It took three separate appointments for him to choose all of his classes, but he did it in the end.

This spring when he walked in I took a deep breath. He chose courses from his departments, but we had a fifteen minute discussion of why he couldn’t take a first -year course in his fourth year, and how exactly one can tell what an appropriate course for each year level is. (It’s pretty hard at our school – 100-level = freshman, 200-level = sophomore, 300= junior & senior, 400-level = senior.)

This gentleman has already been accepted to teacher’s college. Am I the only one scared by that?

 Email This Post