James Stewart is department head of mass communication. If any faculty or staff members are interested in writing from the Front of the Class for the fall semester, they should send E-mails to [email protected] or call (985) 448-4258 to indicate interest.Like every other arena of human endeavor, the university is continually awash with buzzwords. You know those words and phrases that drift in and out of vogue, those sayings that were once traveled just below radar and now seem to crop up in every other sentence.
It’s sort of like an episode of “Sesame Street.”
“The word for today, boys and girls, is ‘Assessment.’ Use it in a sentence. ‘We must assess the effectiveness of the marketing efforts for our widget division over the last seven quarters. ‘Assessment.’ Very good.”
I don’t mean to make light of buzzwords. They have their functions. For one thing, they take up a statistically significant percentage of our vocabulary on any given day.
And, on occasion, they call attention to concepts that have real importance.
Case in point is “advising,” a buzzword that’s recently been rocketing up the charts across university campuses.
You’ve probably heard the word. It’s been around forever.
For too many people the word describes an arcane procedure freshmen are forced to undergo. They are made to meet with some old geezer who drones on and on, when really all the students want is a PIN or a signature on a schedule form so that they can get the heck out of there and get on with their lives.
Upperclassmen seem bent on avoiding this procedure like the Ebola Virus (I would have written “Plague,” but I’m trying to keep this thing contemporary).
There are two major problems with this conceptualization (once a major buzzword in its own right, until overuse drove it to near extinction in the mid 1990s. It’s on the protected list now and can only be used with the proper federal permits).
The first is that not enough people-students or faculty-understand that advising, when done properly, is not simply setting the class schedule.
True advising is akin to mentoring. It means that the student and faculty member must sit and talk about things (insert the buzzwords “have a dialogue” here if you must). The student needs to think about and discuss personal and career goals.
I know this seems like a pain. I used to hate it when my college adviser asked, “What do you plan to be doing five years from now?”
It was kind of like Mom asking, “What do you plan to do with your life?”
Truth be told, I was struggling with planning what to do with my next available weekend. Mapping out a five-year plan appeared well beyond my abilities.
But, you know what? Life happens whether you’re getting ready for it or not. Believe me, having a plan for dealing with it is WHOLE lot better than not having one.
Sometimes talking with another person, particularly someone with experience, can actually help give shape to vague concepts you may have about what you would like to find in your future.
One thing is certain: it is very hard to draw up a map when you don’t even know where you’re going.
And if that doesn’t get across the notion that there is real worth in meeting with an adviser on a regular basis, I offer a concrete incentive-avoidance of danger.
To be sure, class scheduling is only one part of the advising process, but it is an important one. With the new registration systems students no longer need to visit an advisory to schedule classes.
Talking with buddies over a few beers about the easy classes and difficult teachers is may be a much more enjoyable way to come up with a class schedule than spending 45 minutes talking about academic, personal and career goals with some dude that’s like a 112.
There’s one thing you should keep in mind, however. The 112-year-old knows the catalog and when certain classes will be offered. Beer buddies usually don’t.
So, unless you really just enjoy paying ever-increasing costs for books, parking and tuition, and want to delay graduation as long as possible, you might want to schedule a meeting with your adviser.
