Advising Freshmen

It's my turn to be involved in advising the incoming freshmen during their summer orientation. I really like meeting the advisees and their parents, and getting to know them. I love being helpful and trying to assure them there are plenty of people here ready to help with most situations. This year, meeting the parents might be fun. Williamsport has had some significant crime in the past year, including a non-student being randomly murdered a block from campus and two students being held up at gunpoint outside of a local pizza parlour. At least I can say that many of the professors live within walking distance to the school, and that I am in the process of buying a house near campus.

Of course I never see or hear from any of my advisees except when they have to, though it seems like they were more willing to come see me at the end of the year. This makes me happy. I have been able to mediate a few problems, including a student who wanted to drop a class she thought she would fail, and she ended up getting a C or C- by the end of the semester. This was just a question of calling the professor and assuring the student she should go see him.

The only part of advising I don't look forward to is the chaos of registering the students for classes. I hope to instill the fear of God in them today that they need to have a schedule picked out and written down in the time table before coming to registration tomorrow morning.

Funny how most of what I try to do is take away their fear, except when it comes to being prepared for registration...

Oh, and I was very excited to see that one of my new advisees is Wiccan. I wonder if I could convince her to come to the library's Harry Potter Night in October.