Viewpoints: Advising week is going to be OK

Advising week is upon us, but never you fear.

It’s not going to hurt you, and the older you get, the more you fear the last time you get to register for classes.

The first time, however, is a real disaster. The system runs on credits, so no matter what you do as a freshman, you’re not going to get the perfect schedule.

Rearranging it is actually fun in the first place. It feels like an online auction; you race to get your bids for classes in, and at the last second, the server trips and you have no idea how you enrolled in ballroom dancing 101.

What an adrenalin rush.

And worse comes to worst, you have a schedule that doesn’t work well, and you have to go back to your adviser to figure something out. Maybe you have to take a course unrelated to your specified fields, and maybe it’ll be enlightening.

But really, we’re all smart enough to manage ourselves without our advisers in the first place. I learned that the hard way my freshman year.

Advising week was just about to happen, and they sent out the email about meeting with advisers. Along with all the other energetic freshmen, I was pretty good at trying to set up a meeting on time.

Here’s the catch. My adviser, who was the head of the department, wouldn’t return any emails for a week, and there was no automatic response e-mail to inform me of anything.

He was in Italy. And he didn’t tell any of his freshmen.

I knew of a few people who had him as their adviser too, so I checked in with them. It was pandemonium.

Yet, here I am, and now I’m at my last registration period. The funny thing is, I’ve got one graduation requirement that isn’t even offered this upcoming spring.

But I’ll be ok. Something will work out. My adviser is in Europe again, too. It’s a great way to round it off.