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The Merits Of Advising

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This week and next is advising at UConn, when all the students have to sign up for twenty minute slots to meet their advisors to plan their schedules for next semester. If you went to UConn back in the day like I did, you might remember forging signatures on add/drop cards and standing in line in the ROTC hangar to register. Seems like such a madhouse now. I rarely met with my advisor. I had a professor I was friendly with who showed me how to forge his signature so I could expedite registration.

The students can’t do that now. Now, everything is computerized. There are electronic holds that prevent students from using the online registration system if they haven’t paid their fee bill or if they haven’t met with their advisor. And each student is assigned a pick day when they can actually log into the system and register. It’s still a madhouse, but without all the students being herded into one small building.

There are over 800 English majors and sixty-eight professors, so that comes to around twelve advisees per professor. If we take on more than fifteen advisees the merit committee awards extra merit. I have fifty-five as of today—all the dual degree students in English and Education plus all the English majors who haven’t applied to the School of Education yet.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining (well, maybe about the fact that a professor with sixteen advisees qualifies for the same merit as me with my fifty-five). I find the advising period hectic and exhausting, but I really enjoy meeting all my students. I have so many interesting advisees. Lots of students in the honors program, students studying abroad in London and Dublin, students double-majoring for their Liberal Arts degree. I spoke with a young woman this afternoon who is double-majoring in English and Spanish for her Liberal Arts degree with an IB/M in Elementary Education. I thought that was very cool.

I’ve also been very impressed by the students who did not get into Neag but who stayed with me for advising for an English degree. Most—maybe all—of them are planning to apply to the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates at the West Hartford or Waterbury branches. (Back in the day, I did that aktivitas before it was a degree program. Now it is a very intensive and rigorous one-year MA program). But now that they are free of the forty, forty-two, or fifty credits they would have to take as Secondary English, Elementary, or Special Education students, they can do all sorts of cool things with their degree to make themselves good candidates for graduate school in Education. One young woman I met with Tuesday is working on a Certificate in Teaching English from the English Department, a concentration in Criminology, and a minor in Psychology. Another I met with on Monday is working on both the Concentration in Teaching English and the Concentration in Creative Writing. (She will have about forty-eight credits in English, not counting the introduction to Creative Writing prerequisite. For a degree, you only need thirty). Plus she is pursuing a concentration in Women’s Studies.

The other thing I love about advising is talking to the students about their lives. It’s not something encouraged or discussed much within the department, and I know that many if not most of my colleagues avoid it, but I really embrace being an adult mentor to the students. I enjoy getting to know the students and talking to them about themselves, not just about the courses they want to register for. Just this week I had one young man who came to talk about his struggles adjusting to UConn as a transfer student. Two days later, another student opened up to me about struggling with depression. I also had a former high school student come sign up to be my advisee. She went a little astray in life and has just now returned to college after a few wayward years and two years at a community college.

The lives and transcripts of these three students aren’t as neat and tidy and professional-looking as those of most of my advisees, but I relish being able to help and guide these students, too. I feel honored that they come to me, and I am happy when I can help them. To me, that’s much more meaningful than scholarship—even if the merit review committee doesn’t really give a damn.
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