Advising

Kind of like having a guidance counselor in high school that you are forced to talk to every now and then, we have something similar for college. Except, they don't have to listen to your problems, or care about you in the slightest way, for that matter. This person that you are assigned to is a professor in your department of study that you may or may not have in your four years. He or she is your "advisor". Basically, the only time you will ever see them is the week before you have to schedule classes for the following semester. After this 15 minute (or less) meeting with your advisor, they will "greenlight" you--meaning, you are ready and eligible to pick next semester's classes when your time comes (usually at 7 a.m. on a random day of the week--yay). There's no avoiding this encounter. Everyone has to do it.
Of course, as a first semester freshman, I was terrified. Because, with my luck, I would be stuck with that man who doesn't speak English and doesn't know how to answer my questions or forgets about my appointments and doesn't show up. This person is supposed to help me map out my future. That's like, a lot of pressure.
Last semester I met with mine for the first time. Just as I expected, he didn't speak English very well. And he sat on the phone for like 10 minutes, as I sat awkwardly staring at his animal sculptures and paintings around the office, before deciding to deal with me.
The rest of our time went, surprisingly, very smoothly. He was extremely helpful to me and answered all of my questions perfectly even in my desperate state of freshman naivety. That took a huge weight off of my shoulders.
Today, I met with him again to schedule for Fall 2014. It was great. Being the oh-so-wonderfully-prepared-and-organized human that I am, I created a schedule with all of the classes I would like to take next semester in a nice little word document table. He loved it. I think I surprised him with how prepared I was.
He told me that I shouldn't have a problem getting into any of these classes (as I did the semester before) and that made me feel pretty darn good. The only problem I might have is with the night class I plan on taking--Fundamentals of Video Production. That's a little weird though. It's a night class. I didn't think anyone still took those.
Either way, if all works out, I'll only have one class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday! The thought of that freaked me out at first because I'd have 4 classes on Tuesday and 3 on Thursday. Talk about being busy. But my advisor proceeded to tell me how he loves teaching every other day and getting it all over with. That gives him a lot of time to get a lot of work done on the days he doesn't have much to do. His words were really comforting and made me feel so much better about the situation. I just realized that I really like helpful, supportive people.
We talked for a while about my minor (Spanish) even though he is only there to discuss my major (Communications) which was kind of awesome. Being a freshman placed in Spanish 3 is rare and he was really interested in knowing why I am so good at it...  I'm not though. Any doubts that I had about keeping my minor were gone after that conversation. If you're good at something, and you enjoy it (even only a little bit) then go for it. He said he was going to tell his daughter about me because she is considering AP Spanish next year at her high school. That was pretty awesome. I felt kind of important.

While all of my friends and everyone I talk to is busy complaining about how lazy and useless their advisor is, I can be happy knowing that I actually (for once in my life) lucked out.

Be nice to people. They'll appreciate it.


P.S. Look how rad my campus looks covered in snow!!