Josh Green's Student Assembly is always earnestly promising to reform -- along with everything else at Dartmouth -- the faculty advisor program. Good luck to them. Real headway will be even harder to come by on this issue than on the dozens of other "continuing projects" which precede this one on the cute SA agenda cards we all tossed in the Hop blue bins at the end of last term.
I certainly don't blame Mr. Green for trying, and I even believe he really cares. But nobody else does. Why not? Because a change in the advisor program would come too late to affect the students who bring it about. Quite unlike the agitation over social spaces and racial insensitivity (think Ghettogate), lobbying for faculty advisor reform would be strictly for the sake of future generations. It would therefore require a degree of altruism that I cannot expect the student body to demonstrate.
It is a shame, really. As a freshman (epochs ago, admittedly), I spent a cumulative total of 45 minutes with my advisor, spread over three hurried meetings. He asked me what classes I wanted to take; I told him under pressure, intimidated into making myself sound surer than I was; and he nodded "Good, Good" and signed off. "Next!" It was as though he were proud of me for being such an easy advisee.
The whole year, my advisor made only one suggestion to me: to take CS 5. "I recommend it to all my students," he said nonchalantly. Of course, even though I was so flattered by the individual attention, I rejected the advice out of hand. On the whole, he was dutifully nice but genuinely unconcerned. And from what I can gather, most students feel the same way about their advisors.
New students need to learn not what classes to take, but how to decide for themselves what to take. Ideally, sure, the interests of advisors and their freshmen would align perfectly. But naturally this cannot happen, or at least it cannot happen very often. Nor can we hope to improve the pairings by expecting the prefreshmen to be more specific about curriculum plans, for this approach will backfire, destining students to follow up on decisions made prematurely.
Instead, advisors simply need to manifest a greater commitment to seeing their students reach their potential. Meetings should be at least twice a term -- once to prepare the student to make upcoming course decisions, and a followup to make sure those choices were made for the right reasons. Also, they should make these "right reasons" explicit so that students can continue to apply them long after they have bid the final sigh of good riddance to their freshman advisors. Perhaps a pamphlet of general guidelines (brought to you by your Student Assembly! =-)) would accomplish the same purpose even more effectively.
For now, though, as wisdom always comes with age (just look at the administration), I have a few gems of my own I don't mind sharing for the common good:
Shop 'til you drop. Literally. Make your first week of each term a marathon. In the first two days alone, you should attend at least six classes. There is simply no reason not to. If you have classes at 10 and 12, find a friend who has a mildly promising 11 lined up, or else find one yourself. You may just stumble upon a winner (I've lost track of just how many times I have), and even if you don't, what have you lost? You undoubtedly learned something in the lecture, if only that you never want to take a linguistics course, or anything taught by Professor Shpritzenladenhauer. At the very worst, you've got yourself a great horror story to use on dates and in frat basements.
Plan ahead. It sounds obvious, but there is nothing worse than having no room in your schedule for a course you really want to take -- especially when you could have taken it last spring instead of that lame "Economy of Lower Uruguay" class. You should spend hours each term with the ORC and Prospectus -- not just the obligatory 30 minutes to find three courses you're sufficiently psyched on.
This goes too for those notorious emblems of anxiety -- the Distribs. Contrary to near-universal belief, getting them out of the way as soon as possible is not necessarily the best strategy. In fact, feverishly snipe-hunting for requirements you can fulfill in the very next term is a sure-fire ticket to some genuine losers of courses. Instead, hop on the searchable "ORC Online" (www.dartmouth.edu/~reg) and generate a list of all the, say, Non-Westerns for all the terms you'll be on campus. Set your sights on a favorite -- based on both description and professor research -- and plan on it, even if it means waiting a year or two. Leave just enough flexibility for unexpected changes and cancellations.
Take it seriously. Putting a little energy into your course selections is one of the easiest ways to assert leverage over that slippery seesaw of contentment at Dartmouth. I only wish the faculty advisors shared this sentiment.
