Advising

When I transferred to WSU I got assigned to a general advisor. He had NO idea what I needed and ended up signing my form and letting me tell him what I needed. He didn't care. He didn't KNOW.

After that semester of proving myself, I guess, I got transferred to the pre-health science advising office. This is a group of 5 science advisers who only deal with pre-med/dent/pharm/vet. They are coordinated by an advisor who has a chip on her shoulder. The main guy I saw in there was funny and easy to get along with. But he withheld information from me. Big information like needing to get letters together from people and strategy to applying to schools.

I found this out because he decided to not see any students this semester so I met with another advisor, a woman who was incredibly helpful and kind and filled me in on all the things that other advisor had left out. So this October I was basically informed that I am already six months to a year behind schedule for getting in dental school when I wanted to.

Great.

Couple that with my lack of enthusiasm and you end up with the end of semester I lived through. So Aiden and I had many discussions about it and I changed majors.

If you've read the other posts you know I met with my new advisor this week. I had to do a couple of things before I could meet with her. So I got Aiden to work, got the kindergartners off and on the noon bus (I deal with 3 or 4 extra ones depending on the day), the pre-schooler on the bus and realized it was noon but I was SO going to get this done by 1.

I had to go find the office where I change my major (by signing a little slip that I carried around with me the rest of the day), get over to my current advising office to get my student file, and then meet Deb at 1.

I got to my old advising office 5 minutes after they closed for lunch. AWESOME.

Luckily the advisor I saw this October was in there and let me in, found my file, and was figuring out what stays and what goes when the secretary (MS Chip-On-The-Shoulder) showed back up. AND SHE WAS NICE!

Anyway, having interrupted their lunch hour I was grateful and apologetic and booked it out of there to meet with Deb. I was right, I was wrong. She is NOT a mean person, she's a fantastically nice gramma lady who was full of laughter and giggles. She wanted to know why I want to be a teacher. So I told her. We just had a lot of fun in the 10 minutes I was there.

My file comes up under that major REALLY strangely so she was having a hard time figuring it out. She grabbed another advisor (who I emailed over the break... I think she's the dept. head or something big), Brenda.

Brenda said "Oh, you need to do.... Do you have an AA? Okay, have you taken... OH, JUST GIVE ME THE FILE AND THE GIRL, LET'S GO DOWN TO MY OFFICE"

So we tromped over to her office and sat down. Her computer wouldn't work but she did everything she could, explained things to me and was just generally fan. tas. tic.

I ended up leaving there feeling like I was the most important student in their program. (What a big change from those SCIENCE people!)

Aiden says this is what you get when you are now learning from women who used to teach pre-school/elementary school and are now advising people on how to get there for WSU.

I don't know if that's accurate but it feels true.

I love my change of major.

************
Favorite parts of my meeting with Brenda:

1. Do you have an AA?
Yes, I have two. Because I collect them, apparently.

2. Oh, to take Math 251 you have to have placed into an appropriate level of math... what's your math level like?
Um, I took calculus last spring.
Oh! Then you'll be fine!!

3. I'm assuming since you were a science major you're sciences classes are okay? [you are required to take 3 hard science classes with at least 1 lab science to graduate WSU]

***********
Just for fun, here's the classes I'm taking as of Monday:

Human Development: pre-natal to 8
Human Development: Understanding Family Communications
Public Speaking
Music: how to read notes and music theory
a Teaching and Learning course
AND Math 251: (course description: Logical and historical development of present-day number systems and associated algorithms; methods of problem solving.) Math for elementary teachers.

I actually will be in a class where the answers are "12". Not a bunch of symbols and numbers with qualifiers and then "that basically = 12"

I love it!!!

PS- thanks for loaning me book money to avoid the line, MOM!