Thoughts on advising day

Samantha Weber, Staff Writer

I think the idea of advising day as a whole is a great concept for college students. I think most of us need that guidance and most of the time there are a lot of questions regarding the courses needed to fulfill major requirements. I am just a freshman, so I have only have had two advising days so far, but they have been both a rough one and a good one.

My first experience was very awkward- my advisor had forgotten about our meeting, so we had to reschedule for a different day. When we were able to meet, I had the intention of changing my major, but I had not officially done so. When I told my advisor of my plans, there was not much that she could do for me as she was not certain about what I would need for that major. My second experience was with my new advisor for my new major and that one went a lot better. It also occurred not on the designated Advising Day, but I think that was due to the fact that I had only recently switched my major, so I did not have time to schedule a time to meet with my new advisor. Instead he just assigned me to one. That meeting was very brief and lasted a total of three minutes. My two experiences so far have combined for a total of five minutes of meeting with my advisors, but the scheduled slots are 10 minutes long.

It almost seems like the advisors just want to get the meetings over with, which I am sure having meeting after meeting for a whole day does get annoying, but it would be nice to not feel pressured to hurry up and end the call. I think the intentions are all there, I just think that there are some execution concerns that should be looked at. For example, both of my meetings so far have not been on the actual Advising Day, they have always been after. Of course, it is nice to just have a day off from classes and not have any meetings they need to attend, but it became another thing I had to do on a day when I was not completely free of obligations. I like the idea of giving students a day off so that they can focus on their meeting with their advisor, but if a student cannot schedule a meeting with their advisor on the designated day, it might add more stress for some students.

I think that if an advisor has too many advisees that they cannot have all the meetings in one day, they should not have to advise so many students and the school should try to divide the students more evenly among the professors. I know the bigger schools are not as fortunate to have a relationship with their advisor like we do. So, I am thankful that we are able to have to opportunity to build a good relationship with our advisor. I like having Advising Day because it is great to be able to talk to someone who knows your major and/or minor and you can ask them any questions you have and they can help guide you in the right direction, but it always seems very rushed.