eXpress

Wow, the past couple of weeks have been very interesting. "Go-go-go" is the best way to describe it...students lined up, filling the lobby to meet with an advisor about Spring registration questions, emails flowing with registration questions (even some that are responding to an email requesting them to NOT email me this week because of Express Advising...go figure :) ).

Anyway, the Spring registration experience has illustrated one of the challenges of student academic life at a large institution such as ours. This morning I was informed that 3 of the most-needed courses were already full, and there were still two days left of freshman registration (today and tomorrow). The result for today (and presumably tomorrow) was a flood of emails and visits in which students were very stressed because they were unable to register for anything they need for their potential majors. It's a difficult conversation because there is nothing that we advisors can really do to help besides encourage them to check for openings until the first week of class. Students often think that we can "get them into" classes, but we can't...it's difficult to talk through their frustration with them in these cases. If a class is full, the class is full, and it's not fun to not be able to help.

I am confident that courses will work out. Somehow everyone eventually manages to get the chem, calc, and econ they need. But for students who are not familiar with the nature of registration here, it can be pretty nerve-wracking. I know that I helped put some minds at ease this week, but others will continue to worry until those seats open up.

Update

To be honest, nothing super exciting happened during the past week. It's just been the same back-to-back scheduling/registration meetings and it's keeping us all very busy! This coming week will be a little bit different because starting Thursday we will have Express Advising (walk-in, meet with first available advisor, quick appointments) and that will continue each day through next week.

Express advising requires you to shift your style a little bit since meetings are short, you usually don't know the students you meet with because it's walk-in/first-available, and you don't really have much time to review their file before meeting with them. A lot of the time express advising involves just basic questions, which is very nice, but other times it can get complicated, especially since we don't have as much time to work with. I'll give you an Express update next week!