The importance of your academic adviser

An academic adviser may or may not be someone you are underappreciating.

I know I was personally devastated when I found out that my undergraduate adviser for the English department was retiring at the end of March. 

I decidedly left a Thursday morning class so that I could make it to her last available advising appointment.

I think that in college, a good, scholarly support system is something that many of us lack, whether we want to admit it or not. We are wholly capable of giving ourselves good advice, but we seldom follow it.

And friends, though fun, cannot always be vessels for astounding academic guidance, nor can they be the best resources for career path help or educational direction. When we don’t know where to turn or how to do what we’re supposed to know how to do already, the academic adviser swoops in.

College students thrive on indecision; it’s no secret.

Statistically, we change our majors 50 percent of the time, and when we’re not shifting between career paths, we’re worrying about whether we made the right choice in the first place.

When I first came to IU, a scared and isolated transfer student, the first place I felt welcome and certain about what I was doing was in the office of my academic adviser. They pulled out paperwork and ran over course information with the confidence that I so sorely lacked. She was there to be certain of things I couldn’t be. 

If you are someone who doesn’t know your academic adviser for one reason or another, I implore you to seize your opportunity now.

Never again will you have someone hired at your own expense with the sole purpose of
giving you advice.

Academic advisers are the concierges of your college career. They are people you can blindly trust when you ask for directions, and they’ll help you with such flair so that you, personally, will be satisfied with where you are going.

If you are lucky, your academic adviser will give you advice on or off the record, disclosing information that you may not find elsewhere within the University’s handbooks or online policies.

Onestart can only do so much to get you through picking classes for your next semester.

So whether you are preparing to leave or just getting settled in, it’s never a bad time to call in and schedule an appointment. In all honesty, meetings with your adviser can be more therapeutic than anything.

And my former adviser, retired and ready to enjoy the season, should be setting sail at Lake Monroe soon.

I hope that she finds the peace that I so fervently looked for every time I walked into her office.

­— ftirado@indiana.edu