Most of Our Students Will Register on April 7. Students Should Have Made an Advising Appointment

3/15/17

Parents,

Most of our students will register on April 7. Students should have made an advising appointment by now. If not students need to make an appointment now to be sure they get to see their advisor before the registration date. Many of the students I advise have made an appointment, but many have not. I hope you will encourage them to make an advising appointment as soon as they return to campus. Some students will put off meeting with their advisors because they are unsure of their finances. They should see their advisors and register. Payments will be due later.

I wonder if you have seen much change in your students since they returned home for Spring Break. One of the things that I get to observe is the change that our students go through over four years. I may be one of the few faculty who teaches students over the entire span of their college career. As a teacher of freshmen, I don’t expect to see the same skills that I see in seniors. I thought you might be interested in the development progress I expect from freshmen at this point of their first year.

■Responsibility: I expect freshmen to have accepted responsibility for their performance. They know what they need to do, and they do what is expected of them. This is a big change for many freshmen who didn’t start out the year with the sense of responsibility they needed.

■Discipline: I expect freshmen to make good decisions. They should have learned to say no to temptations and to accept the fact that they can’t just have a good time. Temptations from computer games to irresponsible friends are often the downfall of first semester freshmen.

■Maturity: I expect students to behave in a responsible manner. They should have developed their own self-regulating behavior. Students should have made the break from being guided by parents and thosein authority to being in charge of themselves. They do the right things when no one is looking.

■Professionalism: This is a developmental area that will continue to grow, but I do expect students at this point to have begun to understand how a professional acts. You’ll see this is their interactions with others. They should have started to transition from thinking about classes to thinking about a career.

■Social Skills: Many of our students come to college with minimal social skills. Some have never interacted with others than their peer group in a social situation. At this time, I expect they have developed some social awareness and ability to function in some social situations. As they progress through college, they will have more and more social experiences, especially in their job search.

■Self Improvement: This is perhaps the area of greatest growth and greatest need. At first, our students accept test results as just grades without thinking about what they need to do to improve their grades. At this point, I expect students to be able to do a self analysis of their performance and take the corrective actions to make improvement.

I would love to hear from you on what you have observed.

It’s often the case that five minutes can mean so much. Five minutes is such a short period of time, but five minutes can be that moment when a lot comes into perspective.

I was walking from class back to my office. As often happens, students will stop me along the way with questions. The first student I talked to was a young man I had been working with. He had attempted suicide. We had talked about what triggered this moment in his life. He made a promise that he’ll come to see me if he had any more struggles. As we chatted, I was pleased to see that he was doing well. The joy was back in his life. He was excited about his classes and his future.

Just a few more yards down the hall was Melissa, a student who has faced more than her share of life’s problems. She was financing her education through scholarships. She had a 4.00 GPA her first year in college. She got no help from home. Her dad was in jail. Her mother had no job. Last summer she lost her scholarships because her grades had slipped. The reason for her grade issue was a serious muscular-skeletal condition. She didn’t have money for her medicines and was struggling with her health. She was in pain every day and was having trouble sleeping. She came to me in the summer because she had no way to continue her education. I was able to get her a co-op position for the fall semester. By working the fall semester, she was able to earn enough money to return in the spring. The girl, I saw walking down the hall was a different student than last spring. She was full of energy and life. The pain was gone. The smile, was back and the burdens she faced had declined.

Next I met Jon, a first generation American whose family came to the United States from another country. I first met Jon in the fall when he came to discuss his financial condition with me. He was financing his college education on his own. He was concerned about the debt he was incurring. We talked about his needs, and I was able to connect Jon with a local construction company where he worked over the summers. He was able to finance his remaining education with minimal loans. What is even better is that his job will be directly related to his major of Civil Engineering.

The final student I met was Ashley. She had been in my office that morning. She was very upset. She had been offered her dream internship. She was upset because she didn’t think she could accept it for a variety of reasons. The internship was with Boeing in Seattle and Ashley didn’t think she could afford the travel and housing. She was concerned that she wouldn’t have a car. We talked through each of these, and she left the office with a plan to resolve her concerns.

When I saw Ashley in the afternoon, she had a huge smile on her face. All of the issues were resolved. The plan had worked.

Five minutes is a small slice of life, but it can often make everything worthwhile. I’ve been blessed to have many of these five minute experiences in my 49 year teaching career. I’m just glad that I was able to help our students in their moment of need, and they trusted me enough to help them.