By Ayana Bessard, Staff Writer

Published Oct. 22, 2014

I just can’t understand why some UNCG students seem to be so apathetic when it comes to advising.

It is simply astounding to me why students wouldn’t be enthusiastic about making progress towards getting that coveted college degree?

Not to mention that you can your tailor graduation plan however you want, and plan for future semesters while preparing and sitting through this short meeting with a faculty member.

Yet, I think the real problem lies in the attitude students’ form in their earlier years.  This attitude views meeting with an adviser as part of a routine that one must glide through in order to move onto the next semester unscathed.

Many students admit that they just enroll in the classes suggested by their adviser, because they believe their adviser is putting them on track to graduate in four years, or better known as “on time.”

Later, however, many of those students who thought they were near graduation will realize that they unfortunately have an extra semester of classes to take.

That’s when students start to realize that the advising sessions don’t really do much more than provide a couple of options for classes to take and the advising you need to sign up for those classes at a later date.

But, let’s be real, if you want to really understand registration and make sure you’re on the smoothest and quickest path to graduation, you have to do much more than attend a fifteen to twenty-minute advising session.

A big problem with these advising sessions is that they’re short, informal, and aren’t personal at all.

It’s important that the advisor knows something about the student’s current situation and ultimate goals in order to better advise and recommend.

They need to know when the student plans to graduate and how much of a workload they can handle in order to propose proper class selections and credit hours.

Advisers should know what classes are the most important for the individual student’s success so students are not taking classes they don’t need.

That flaw in the advising process seems to be the most frustrating to UNCG students.

Mica Bulliox, a senior on campus, feels that advisors should explain how the degree evaluation works, so that students can map out a plan, or at least get some ideas, and then talk with the advisor about that plan.

While speaking with her she told me, “I just wish the sessions were a little more informative, and then maybe I could figure the rest out on my own. My adviser and I would look through classes that I could take, but a lot of them ended up being ones that I didn’t really need.”

It would be ideal for advisers to encourage students to make a graduation plan that includes all of the classes they need and want to take for the estimated four years they’ll be attending college.

This would be something that the student and adviser go by each semester when its time to register for classes.

That way the student can know always know where he or she stands in regards to graduation and the advisor can give both good and useful advice when discussing class registration.

Of course, I know that time is limited because there are so many students and so few advisers.  But that isn’t an excuse.

Students can talk about degree evaluations, graduation plans, and registration in depth in the Students First office, although it isn’t required by the university.

It’s important that something more common, such as registration advising sessions, are more informative because students deserve to know and understand how to plan their own college journey.