The stress of scheduling is something all college students are forced to deal with.

The anxiety becomes palpable around campus; everyone knows what horrid thing is soon to come.

Advising Day acts as a little reprieve that helps students to bear those burdens until it is finally time to schedule.

Advising day, a day of both responsibility and rest, is a great support for our student body.

It is a time for us as students to sit down and have serious discussions with our advisers about our academic futures.

The knowledge we gain from their insight is absolutely priceless.

It is a wonderful thing that our school mandates this time for us to spend with faculty.

The opportunity to meet with professors one-on-one is advantageous in and of itself, but so is having an entire day free of classes.

After their meetings, the students are free to go to work immediately on the suggestions given them by their adviser.

Even when students do not take full academic advantage of the opportunity to work that Advising Day provides, it still is incredibly beneficial.

For students, Advising Day is used to rejuvenate their spirit.

Have you been missing out on social interactions because of a rigorous schedule?

Hang out with friends!

Amid the stress of school work and scheduling pressures, Advising Day offers time for some much-needed relaxation.

My only complaint about Advising Day is the limited amount of time available for the actual meeting.

Faculty often use Advising Day simply to check over schedules that are already planned by the student, and so they only allot 15 to 30 minutes for each meeting.

Not much can be accomplished in that short of a period of time.

If students have more in-depth questions, those answers are going to take more time.

I know that I especially needed extra guidance this year during Advising Day.

Near the end of last semester, I finally declared a major, having started my Mercyhurst career as an exploratory student.

It took time for me to figure out what path I needed to follow and what classes I should be catching up on.

Luckily, my adviser was willing to meet with me multiple times to help figure out my mess of a schedule.

In order to fix this problem of not having enough time with our faculty members, one of two things could be done.

Faculty could offer extended slot times for those students who feel they may need a little more time and shorter times for those who just need a quick check.

Offering the shortened meeting times would help to even out any serious time constraints caused by the extended meetings.

Another consideration would be adding a second Advising Day.

During the first day, advisers could guide students toward their academic path and recommend classes, while the second could be used to quickly approve more well thought out schedules.

As is, Advising Day is a wonderful thing for the students at our university.

It encourages faculty members and their advisees to get together and discuss future plans and scheduling options.

Improvements could certainly could be made.

But overall, our students can only benefit from this opportunity.

I hope that everyone at Mercyhurst was able to take full advantage of Advising Day this semester.