Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, June 03, 2002

Relaxed beginnings

Summer school starts here tomorrow. Today is registration and that's always an interesting time. Since we have preregistration here (even for new, incoming students) and we have on-line add/drop most of the students we see are "last minute" students. They've decided to take classes here at the last minute. Sometimes that's because an opportunity has opened up and allowed them to get a class in. More often, however, the reasons aren't as optimistic as that. Students find out that they've failed classes and so are now scrambling to get back on track. Some decided, "Hey, I don't have anything better to do so why not go to summer school..." Others are just chornically late or lacksidasical. In all these cases I am amazed that the student wants to try a four week, "Drinking from the fire hose" approach to the class. I mean there's almost no room for error in these courses. One overslept day usually means that your grade drops a whole letter and usually these students can't afford to have that happen.

More amusingly is that fact that many of the students come totally unprepared. Usually, the conversation goes something like this:

Student: Hi, I'd like to take some summer courses at Gordon.
Me: Cool, do you have an academic summary for me?
Student: Uh....what's that?
Me: Are you a readmit, transient or new student?
Student: Uh....yeah...
Me: Have you been over to the admissions office?
Student: Uh...am I supposed to go there first?
Me: Yes, go over and make sure your file is all squared away and then come back with an academic summary and we'll be good to go.
Student: OK...I'll be back

15 minutes passes...student returns...with freshly printed academic summary in hand

Student: Ok, I got that thing you needed.
Me: Great...what courses did you want to take?
Student: I need Chemistry and Calc I
Me: We don't offer Chemistry in the summer and Calc I is full, do you have a summer schedule?
Student: Uh....

As you can tell, this sort of advising can be a highly rewarding experience for both me and the student. So, the only approach to take is to chill out and relax. You can't really invest much in the students you see so you just try to have a totally cool attitude and let it all slide. Tonight I'll share some of the stories with my wife and we'll laugh. That's not to say I don't try to help the students that come to see me, but I'm not going to get all wrapped up in their poor planning crisis. The students with their bouyant waterfowl achieving linear symmetry have already got their classes and will be here, ready to go tomorrow. Today is just preliminaries.

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