It’s one of those sick-in-the-pit-of-your stomach feelings, where the room is spinning and you can’t really concentrate on anything. You pinch yourself and hear an audible groan. Is that sound coming from you? Ok, take a breath… just breathe.
Yes, you guessed it, you are sitting in your college advisor’s office as she, a little too cheerfully, tells you that somehow you are missing 6 credit hours – just two classes – and instead of graduating in a few short months, with your hard earned diploma in hand and wearing your TCU purple gown, oh so fashionably, you will be sitting in the audience with a poker-face cheering on your fellow classmates.
Mentally, you are calculating the cost of tuition, thinking of the two part-time jobs you are killing yourself with just to make ends meet, and the need to call every single relative you know who has marked your graduation ceremony on their calendar with a permanent purple pen (let me stress permanent purple pen!!!) and telling them, oops, I’m missing two classes so you will have to cancel the road trip, and save my graduation present until next semester. (If they want to send some graduation money now however, so you won’t have to live off of chicken flavored ramen noodle soup for another semester, that is fine too...)
Unfortunately being misadvised is the plight of many college students. In fact, advising problems account for “one of the top three reasons students said their graduations were delayed” according to an article in the Texas Christian University Daily Skiff newspaper. In a survey of graduating seniors from 2007-2008, The Skiff noted that “one in about every 10 students reported being misadvised to the point of delaying graduation.”
Not only is misadvising frustrating but also it can be expensive to have to enroll in another semester or two just to take a few extra classes you need to graduate. Hard to decipher core and major requirement sheets make the task of selecting the correct class difficult. Although each department has their own class requirement sheet, it can be difficult to be completely sure which core requirements have been fulfilled and which are still lacking.
Students’ unofficial transcripts have requirement codes written in bold but unless you are trained to know what the code means it can come off looking like gibberish. Also it would be beneficial if advisors helped students register for classes during the advising meeting instead of giving students a list of class options and letting them register later. Sometimes when students are reading the class options online, they accidently select the wrong class by trying to fit it into their schedule. Good advising is essential to graduating on schedule.
Admittedly, advising is a two-way street. It’s easy to put all the blame on the advisor but it is also the student’s responsibility to be organized enough to know what classes they have taken and which ones they still need to graduate. Communicating with advisors is the responsibility of the student and is integral to a student’s success. Go to your advising appointment with all the materials you need. Know your requirements, what classes you have already taken, and be sure to print off your unofficial transcript ahead of time. Have an alternate set of classes picked out that work with your schedule just in case the ones you want aren’t available. Be prepared.
It never hurts to get a second opinion, too. If you have met with your advisor and still feel unsure, don’t hesitate to go to the head of the department and have them look over your transcript.
In an effort to stymie costly advising mistakes, the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU now offers a pre-advising workshop to answer general questions and also make sure students have the paperwork needed before they meet one-on-one with an advisor. The workshop is geared primarily towards freshman and sophomore students but junior and seniors are always welcome.
Advisors at TCU are usually experienced faculty members; however, even they can easily make mistakes. Faculty advisors undergo a training period but often still feel their knowledge is inadequate, especially when advising seniors. Although each major department assigns students their advisors, there is the option of requesting another advisor if you feel yours isn’t prepared or doesn’t understand the program. Most students don’t realize they can request a change; all they need to do is speak to the dean’s office and explain their request. When you find a knowledgeable advisor stick with him or her; their expertise is invaluable.
If you have been misadvised and feel like the advising process in general is intentionally created to be difficult and misleading, listen to the student: advisor ratio for the Oklahoma University College of Journalism and Mass Communication. In 2004 according toOklahoma University Daily, a single advisor was responsible for 1,400 students. Now that makes the number of advisors we have here at TCU seem like a small army! Maybe we shouldn’t complain so much.
In fact, we should stop complaining all together. Just deal with it. If you have done everything you can do to be prepared, made every single one of your advising appointments, and followed your advisor’s instructions to a T then there is really nothing else you can do. Your advisor meets with many more students than just you, so you can’t blame them for making an occasional mistake. Yes, I know you don’t want to be that one student they misadvise and I don’t blame you. But, generally speaking, advisors really do care and genuinely want to help students with their college experience.
Perhaps the heart of the problem lies in the sheer complication of the curriculum system itself. If the core curriculum wasn’t changed every few years and the requirement sheets were written in a way that both students and advisors could decipher, maybe there would be fewer mistakes and more students taking the correct classes and actually graduating on time. If roughly 10% of students aren’t graduating on time then, out of TCU’s current enrollment, approximately 900 students are graduating late because of advising issues.
Until college officials make the requirement sheet easier to read there’s not a whole lot we can do as students. We need a clear chart outlining exactly what classes to take and when. Perhaps some form of computer program can be instigated that alerts students if they have selected a course that doesn’t fulfill their degree plan.
So take a deep breath, steady your nerves, and keep your blood-shot, sleep-deprived eyes open for a few more minutes as your try not to panic during your next advising appointment. If you need to yell, well, maybe you should step outside the advisor’s office for a minute and then walk calmly back in.
College is all about learning, living life, facing challenges and gaining wisdom from our experiences. Hopefully your college experience makes you a stronger and better-rounded person. Hopefully you will have the best advisor and take all the right classes at all the right times. Hopefully you won’t be the one in ten college students who is misadvised and ends up graduating late. If you are, hopefully you will make the best of it.
So maybe another semester won’t be that bad. After all, despite the complaining you do on a regular basis, you really do actually like college. Well, except for the tests and homework, but the overall college experience is pretty enjoyable. Late night study groups complete with snacks and laughter aren’t something you will find at your real job, when you actually become an adult and have to work during spring break. Well, okay, you already work during spring break, but you still have the whole “idea” of spring break…. Where you get to take a break from school and do a few fun things. Yeah, and there are the football games, and tailgate parties – you wouldn’t want to miss a whole semester of those just to work in the real world now would you? Besides, you only live once, so how bad could another semester be?
Don’t tell anyone, but I actually love college, and I bet you do, too. Sleep deprivation, homework, and maniac professors, extra classes you don’t need, well that’s all part of the package. I’m sure the challenge will make us better people, don’t you think? So if misadvising happens to you, join the crowd and meet me at the tailgating party. Who says being a senior only lasts a year? We will graduate soon enough, purple gowns flowing, diplomas in hand, and ecstatic cheers of family members who wrote our graduation date in pencil this time.
