April 16, 2008
-
You know… I constantly work on being a great teacher. I beef up my activities in class, change assignments that aren’t working, find new & fun reading material, ETC., BUT I’ve never wondered about how to be a GREAT ADVISOR. Now that I am one (I think this was my second official year of being any one student’s advisor), I suppose that should be examined.
My advisor in college stunk. Well, honestly, he was just my least favorite professor. Other than detesting appointments with his overtly serious & stoic attitude, he wasn’t an idiot; he pointed me in the right direction quickly every time we met. He knew the answers to where I had to find everything (forms, people who would allow me to graduate, etc.) & he didn’t take 5 minutes to say something that would normally take 1. So, I have to ask myself which type of advisor I am. Sadly, I typically point students to the Enrollment Services peeps downstairs from me about financial aid stuff and the like. But fortunately, students’ meetings with me are never over 15 minutes. I could sit there and ask them about every class (make ‘em feel bad for failing math again, etc.), but I see where they are at, jot down classes they should consider taking in the next semester, smile a lot, make a few jokes about how I can’t spell Anthropology, and then send them on their merry ways. I guess I do what I feel I missed out on with my undergraduate advisor… joy, fun, WITH quickness & answers.
Now, my graduate advisor was a whole other ball of Canadian wax, but he knows how easy he was to deal with… and how he challenged me continually to TIGHTEN UP MY THESIS… and how he was the one who called after he talked to the VP here and said, “I think he wants to hire you” in an encouraging voice that I needed to hear.
To sneak back to my original question: Students, what do you want/need in an advisor?
