my soapbox

[SAEalumnus]

I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but.....

What ever happened to advisors actually giving freaking advice like their title would imply?

So it's like this.... when I was in high school, I took some honors/ap level math and physics and almost majored in physics in college to begin with, but wasn't sure what one would do with a degree in physics. So I figured I would ask the guidance counselor at the career center on campus. Who better to ask, right? Famous last words as it turns out. The guy sat me down arbitrarily in front of a dictionary of engineering disciplines and told me to pick one. He never bothered to ask about my personal or professional interests. Now, there's certainly nothing wrong with engineering, but it's a very specific sort of work environment and career style; some people dig it, most don't (including me). The problem is, physics and mechanical engineering (my choice) are essentially the same curriculum through the first two years. So it wasn't until the end of my sophomore and beginning of my junior level classes when the two subjects diverged and I was able to see that I didn't personally care to be an engineer. Long story short... it was March of my third year when I was finally able to change majors and get back on track with physics. The main problem with this timing is that due to when physics courses are offered on my campus, I had to wait until my fourth year to start my sophomore physics courses! Then since I've been working 2 jobs to afford school and fraternity and life (and the occasional date with my gf), I've ended up spending 7 years for my freakin bachelors degree. Granted, cal state schools tend to require more like 5 years than 4 since you can't always get your classes (a separate rant altogether, but anyway...), so I could have been two years into a PhD program with my masters already in hand by now.

And another thing!

My advisor at college never bothered to offer any advice about careers with a degree in physics - only what courses to be sure to take to spend the least amount of time possible getting the bachelors. Any information I've gotten about careers with my kind of degree is stuff I've had to personally research. If only I had gotten some real advice from anyone I could have had an entirely different career path than the one I'm currently looking at. Sheeesh!

It's apparently all about getting as many people through as possible in the shortest amount of time possible - what ever happened to a proper customer service attitude in education?

....

I think I'll get off my soapbox now.

[KSigkid]

I found a lot of the same thing while at Boston U.

It took me going around to different professors, and eventually finding a few who helped me out with many of the questions I had about my majors, career path, etc.

I even ended up having trouble with my graduation application because of shotty advice from an undergrad advisor in one of the departments - it took until second semester of senior year for them to spot the problem, luckily I got it solved and graduated on time.

That's one of the tough parts about any academic insitution. You're not alone in your frustration though, and this is one of the reasons I'm glad I'm done with school (at least for right now - I know I'll encounter the same struggles when I get my grad degrees down the road).

[Peaches-n-Cream]

I am so sorry about this situation. Have you considered taking summer session? That might help you finish your degree a little more quickly. I suggest that you go straight to your department and talk to a professor who might be able to help you. I think that establishing a personal relationship with your professors is always a good idea. Those undergrad advisors mean well, but don't know everything. You shouldn't leave you future in the hands of a fellow undergrad.

[astroAPhi]

Hey, at my school, the advisors tell you to take the wrong classes sometimes.

Are your advisors just all of the professors in the department, or do they have someone who is just trained to advise?

[Lady Pi Phi]

I will just interject here, but university is not a career/job training institution. If you want a job, a community college is the best place to go. I think career advisors at university don't lead you in the right direction, a) because they don't care...it's their job, they only want the pay cheque and b) most people who graduate will not find a job in their major. While it is true that nowadays most employers want their employees to have university degrees, they really don't care what your degree is in. Now while there are a few career choices that require a specific degree, for example, medicine, law, engineering. Most do not.
So, don't worry about your major...hell I don't have one. I will have a BA but no major when I graduate, so if I am at university to get a job in my field/major, well it looks like I'll be working at Burger King for the rest of my life.
So enjoy your major, take what you like. University should be there to teach you self discipline and how to think. It's not job training.

[astroAPhi]

Errr... I'd disagree. You are right, if you want a job in science, you need to get a B.S. But community college is just going to get you a job, not a career. Employers are becoming increasingly big on continuing education as well. Almost everyone I work with has taken some sort of graduate level courses, because you need more background to get anywhere.

Yes, some profs teach just because they have to in order to do their research. But I've met some professors who are in it because they geniunely love teaching and their subject.

[UCFPhiDelt]

I can't agree with any of you more strongly. Advisors many times give little or no career advice. The reason is two fold: they don't care and they are not qualified to do so. Many educators and administrators fail to realize that students must be able to get a job once those four years are over. It goes hand in hand with my belief that a counselor should ask you straigh t out "what re you going to do with your degree in French?" If you saying anything but grad. school, translator or teacher, they should stop you right there. Why get a degree to end up with an $8/hour job you can get right now in school without a degree? One last thing, I disagree with the statement that "most people who graduate will not find a job in their major." This is only true for people who get degrees that are of limited application or use in the job market. IF you get that degree in phys. ed., yea start looking outside your field. BUT isn't thatyour fault in the first place for getting a degree you can't use?

[Lady Pi Phi]

Well I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I have also worked with people who have taken graduate level courses have been working for years in a dead end job where they call people up and ask them where their car is (I used to work for GMAC and to be a full time employee you had to have a university degree).

I also know people who went to community college and are no Brand Managers at Coca-Cola working in marketing and started out making 70,000 a year. So I will disagree with you there, Community College can get you a career.

[Lady Pi Phi]

Originally posted by UCFPhiDelt
...IF you get that degree in phys. ed., yea start looking outside your field. BUT isn't thatyour fault in the first place for getting a degree you can't use?

The problem with is if everyone went into Pre-Med, Pre-Law or computer science, or something like that, there wouldn't be enough jobs in those fields to accomodate everyone.

I used to be a poli. sci. major. What am I going to do with that? Work for the government? I could do that with any degree? So I guess my degree is useless being that I will graduate with a general BA. Like I said, I guess I'll end up at Burger King, or back at GMAC asking ."Dude. where's my car"

[FuzzieAlum]

Why would you expect career advice from a professor/advisor? That's not their job, or their area of expertise. They should be able to tell you what classes to take (no excuse for getting that wrong!), and if you decide to head for academia yourself, no doubt their personal experience will come in handy - they too took the GRE and navigated PhD applications, etc.

But most professors have spent their entire lives in academia - or their non-academic experience was decades ago. Why should they know what you can do with a physics (or English or anything else) degree? Go to the career office for that. Now if the career office is crappy, that's a problem, but it's not your professor's fault.

As for h.s. counselors, well, I've known very few people who had good experiences with them. That's no excuse of course. Just an observation.

[Munchkin03]

Originally posted by FuzzieAlum
Why would you expect career advice from a professor/advisor? That's not their job, or their area of expertise.

I received excellent career advice from my advisor! With my career field, the only person on campus who was able to offer any advice was my advisor/professor. In fact, when I went to the career office to ask for information, they simply told me to talk to someone in my department or professionals that I knew. If your advisor is imminent in your field--even if it has only been in a teaching capacity--s/he more that likely knows people you can talk to, which graduate schools are up-and-coming in your field, and such. I would not underestimate the importance of the professor in a career search, especially if you know beyond a shadow of a doubt what you are going to do.

Even though I graduated with "just" a Bachelor's, I feel fairly prepared for a job in my field. I used those aforementioned academic connections to get summer jobs and research opportunities, as well as independent studies--and I was architectural history! Talk about an unemployable major...

As I end, I will repeat that although my career services office is excellent, it was NO substitute for the information that I learned from the professors in my department. Take advantage of those professors as much as possible--they are here to help!

[tinydancer]

This brings back a major beef I have with high school counselors. Mine was just useless. We received no help or information on college choice, admission, applications, no anything. Also, I KNOW I got no information about possibly placing out of certain courses that I know now I could have done. I see no excuse for that.

Granted, that was waaaay back in the day, so I hope things have gotten better. Those people had a way easy job back then.

[SAEalumnus]

Long story as short as I can make it....

At my school, when you're within 10 classes or 40 units of graduation, you apply for a grad check. The registrar's office goes through your record and degree requirements and sends you a printed list of everything you still have left before you can graduate. When you're done, you apply to graduate and the registrar's office goes through everything since your grad check to make sure everything has been satisfied. Following this, one of two letters will be mailed to you: either a congratulatory letter confirming that your degree has been posted, or a deferral of graduation letter citing the remaining requirement(s) before you can graduate. If there are any mistakes, you have five weeks to clear them and still graduate. Otherwise, you have to register for additional units (to be considered an actively enrolled student - a requirement for graduation), pay additional registration fees, file another application to graduate, and pay another graduation fee.

So here's my situation. For my major, one is required to conduct a senior project for two consecutive quarters (PHY 461 and 462) at two units each. At the end of the first quarter, your project advisor assigns you either "SP" (satisfactory progress) or "I" (incomplete) on your transcript, depending upon how far you got in that first quarter relative to how far you should have gotten. At the end of the second quarter, assuming you've finished your project, you're given a letter grade for 462 at which time the advisor is supposed to change your grade on your transcript for 461 to the same letter grade. This way all four units are figured into your grade point average and with the same grade.

Recently, when grades for spring were posted, I noticed that I received an "A" for 462, but that the "SP" from 461 was changed not to a letter grade, but to "RP" (report in progress), which does NOT get figured into my GPA. I thought this was peculiar, but was not concerned until I received a deferral of graduation letter today in the mail, citing that I still needed 461 to graduate. The registrar's office didn't mail the letter until last week (the quarter ended last month), so I now have only until July 17th - next Thursday - a whole ten days to fix this in order to still technically graduate when I intended to.

This also means that I have to put my job hunt on hold - consider what would happen if I got a job that required a college degree, or worse, one that required the specific degree I've earned, only to find that I didn't technically graduate on account of these two stupid units because my advisor didn't make the correct notation on the grade form. Certainly I'd be fired. So I just finished sending an email to both my advisor and to the department chair informing them of this "oversight" and of the deadline and also stating that I'd be calling in the next day or two to make sure everything is being taken care of. Can you believe this? I might not graduate when I want to and might have to spend several hundred dollars in registration and application fees in order to re-apply for graduation if they can't fix this! I can't tell you how pissed off I am right now!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

[SAEalumnus]

I ended up getting a response back from the department chair within approximately an hour of my email. Her email stated (paraphrased) the following:

• my project advisor is currently in India (his home country)
• the department secretary is on vacation
• I'm not the first person this has happened to this quarter
• my advisor has already been made aware of this situation
• when my advisor contacts her with a letter grade for me, she'll handle it

I'm one of I think a total of three students who worked with this same instructor on their projects. I'd be willing to bet that he did the same thing to the other two - I know for a fact that there's at least one other student - she's supposed to be going to grad school this summer - hopefully she gets this taken care of soon too or it'll be a short trip to her grad program. Oh well. As long as it gets taken care of soon....

[Peaches-n-Cream]

Good luck, SAEactive. I hope that you graduate when you intended.