Current Events > Is there a profession worse than college advisors as far as approachability/help

(+) Yeah! (+)

helpfulness goes?

I swear to god these people don't answer their phones, they don't respond to emails, they don't follow up on anything, they mislead you

Aren't advisors just professors they are assigned students to advise? My advisor barley spoke English which made communication difficult.

I always loved how TV/movies portray advisors as caring helpful people when they are the most useless fucks in education

Tow yards

they will go out of their way to milk daily storage rates as long as they can

yeah my experience has been pretty bad with them too. I tell people to do their own research and double check shit they say all the time...

I just never used mine. My school had an automated advisor that helped you plan your schedule and keep track of how many credits you had and how many more you needed. I had no need to actually make an appointment with my real advisor. I wonder wtf she was getting paid to do tho...

I've had major conversations with two advisors at my college. One an honors advisor who's part of the College of Arts & Science, and one an honors advisor of the business school.

CAS I spoke to in freshman year, they were super unhelpful. I wasn't asking about something called the liberal arts management program and although they answered my questions confidently at the time I later learned that they were super wrong. I wanted to know as well if I could dual degree in English and they didn't really help except to say to try to write out the future classes. Which like, fair, but there was never any talk about whether any of the programs was actually the right choice for me, my motivations for seeking them, how they would assist me or not etc.

The business advisor I spoke to last semester, talking about various concentrations in business. She was super straightforward and knowledgeable about what gets serious job offers and what is more just 'for interest'. Our business school takes our recruitment and post-college trajectory really seriously and it shows in the advisors.

BuckVanHammer posted...

yeah my experience has been pretty bad with them too. I tell people to do their own research and double check shit they say all the time...

lilORANG posted...

I just never used mine. My school had an automated advisor that helped you plan your schedule and keep track of how many credits you had and how many more you needed. I had no need to actually make an appointment with my real advisor. I wonder wtf she was getting paid to do tho...

my current problem is that I am locked out of registering for courses until I speak with an advisor, however, THESE FUCKS WON'T TALK TO ME

alexa play Hotline Bling by Drake

The problem is caseloads.

In many colleges, each advisor gets anywhere between 1k and 2k students that they are responsible for each year. They'll schedule 10 minute blocks to meet with students, and they fill up all day, every day with very little breaks. As a result, they answer emails and listen to voicemails either between student meetings (i.e. 1-2 minutes), or staying late into the evening working. Lots of voicemails and emails get missed.

I'm not taking away blame from the individual advisors, but this is a structural problem with colleges underfunded and not being able to pay for the amount of advisors needed.

Meanwhile, faculty complain about administrative bloat when more funding gets put into these positions, but then also complain when they get assigned students to advise because there aren't enough advisors.

Scintillant posted...

my current problem is that I am locked out of registering for courses until I speak with an advisor, however, THESE FUCKS WON'T TALK TO ME

alexa play Hotline Bling by Drake

You need to schedule an appointment with them physically. That's usually the best way to reach them. Does your college have any scheduling app you can use to get on their calendar?

My college advisor was possibly the most awful woman I've ever met in my entire life.

If you went to her to discuss class choices? She'd treat you like a huge nuisance and criticize all of your decisions. This wasn't exclusive to me - I heard her doing the same thing to others through the door while waiting for appointments, and I heard numerous other students discussing the same thing. Apparently one girl from one of my classes had broken down and cried in a meeting with the advisor, because the woman was so rude and demanding to her.

It only got worse if you tried to ignore her. She gave me a list of classes required for my major, and I decided to just use that to make my schedule for the following semester. She eventually contacted me to review it, and demanded to know how I came up with these classes. When I told her, she was visibly annoyed, even though nothing I chose was out of line or wrong in any way.

And then there's the time that she was late for an appointment. I had made it for 3:00, and I was in her waiting room while she was in her office alone. I waited and waited, until it was nearly 3:30, when I decided to pop my head in and just be sure that she was even aware that I was there. I had assumed that she was, but I was running low on time and needed to leave soon, and she was over 30 minutes late and just sitting in her office by herself. After I popped my head in, she told me to keep waiting, slammed the door behind me, and then walked out to her assistant to loudly complain about how rude I was and that she couldn't believe that anyone would ever do that. All because I wanted to be sure that she knew I was there when she was quite late for an appointment.

I absolutely despise that bitch. I dreaded meeting with her every single time, because she was condescending, crabby, and just all-around rude. We did get a chance to review our advisors shortly before graduation, at least, and I left the longest review possible outlining what a terrible person she was and how she should be fired if the college had any common sense.

Mine was bad. I got lots of wrong and unhelpful guidance. He also literally laughed out loud at an unpaid internship proposal I wanted to seek funding for.

On top of it all I think I *almost* walked in on him and the receptionist making out and feeling each other up. That's how they reacted and looked at least.

I probably did an extra semester (and a half) because of him.

brestugo posted...

On top of it all I think I *almost* walked in on him and the receptionist making out and feeling each other up. That's how they reacted and looked at least.

That sounds awesome

In 2010, I went to an advisor for help choosing the right classes because I wanted to start attending college for real and get a degree. This clown glanced at my transcripts, which had one guitar class and one dance class on it that I took purely for personal enjoyment, and said "You need to ask yourself why you've been attending since 2009 and haven't made much progress."