My college adviser always seems
preoccupied with
trivial things about
my life. Like if I'm
"Graduating with a good GPA,"
or "Graduating
on time." Or
"Graduating."
It's little concerns
like these that force me to
enjoy the meaningful, albeit brief,
times I've spent with my
advisers.
I've had two advisers at
UL Lafayette. They shall
remain nameless in case (and
this is a very VERY long
shot) I'm
unsuccessful in my life. Because we all know
the fingers immediately
point toward the advisors if the chemical engineering
major becomes a
ventriloquist.
Before I continue with
my random and unnecessary
point, let me do as I usually
do and make an ass out
of u and me.
I assume every semester
looks a little something
like this for you:
As the end of the
semester nears, you hear little
phrases circulating around
campus like "advised"
and "it's time to
get." They're very vague and hard
to piece together, so
you tend to
ignore them until early the next spring. As it
turns out, you need to
get advised.
You then go through the
process of sitting in your
department hall three minutes
before your advising
appointment (which
you rescheduled four times because
of "legitimate reasons"
involving
your favorite Seinfeld rerun), shuffling blue sheets
around and
relying on a two-semester old copy of some other university's advising
newspaper. You're pissed that this whole ordeal will take a whopping 15
minutes
of your time.
You go into your office
and your adviser sits at
his/her desk as you pretend to know which classes you wish to take next
semester.
At this point, your
adviser could say "You are aware
you haven't taken dolphin molestation yet, right?" and you would answer
a confident "No, I was going to."
Also, at this point, it
would be handy if you were a
drama major, because then you
might actually be good at making up
reasons for why you dropped your geology
class four times.
Your adviser then
reluctantly signs your paper after
you continue to ask questions
for 34 minutes while Tim Landry is
waiting out in the hall for you to finish.
Then that's it. Your
time with the adviser is over.
This wo/man's purpose is to make
sure you graduate on time and that's
all you have to show for it? You take the
signature and go? Hell,
you're not even going to actually schedule half the classes
he wanted
you to. In fact, you lose your PAC number in four minutes.
That's why I suggest
doing the following next time
you're getting advised.
This takes some
preparation (sorry) so fill out your
blue sheet legitimately 20
minutes before the advising (instead of the
usual frantic 15 minutes before). This
will give you time.
"Well, looks like that's
it," your adviser will say
after a streamlined advising session.
"We finished early. Thanks for
getting that weird blue sheet stuff out of the way."
"No problem," is what
you should tell him. Then
follow it with a discouraged look.
"What's wrong?" he'll
undoubtedly query.
"Oh, i-it's nothing,"
you should say, while
continuing to stare at the ground. "It's just...well. There's this
girl. She's everything I've ever wanted in another human
being. But I
get the feeling she's oblivious to the fact that I'm alive. I was just
wondering if you could possibly....ADVISE me on what I should do?"
As you say that last
part, it's best to throw in an
eyebrow raise while turning
your head upward to face him.
This will most likely
confuse/disturb him and will
ultimately make your advising
sessions much shorter in the future.
So, yeah. This whole
column was a sham. Getting
advised sucks.
©2004 Tim Landry
