Just about every college student will have to visit their academic advisor at some point throughout their academic career. This is because advisors help students choose the courses that they need to take in order to meet certain academic requirements, and above all to be successful after college. If nothing else, a student’s advisor has to approve the courses that a student chooses to take in a given semester. The advisor can then help the student possibly choose a course that would be more beneficial to the student, or they can simply approve the courses chosen by the student. Many students may be too shy to meet with somebody they’ve never met before, let alone somebody who will play such a big part in their day-to-day life. I’ll admit that I was initially pretty nervous about meeting with my advisor, Russ DeFonce.
I initially reached out to Russ through e-mail the day that advanced registration began. I was pretty nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, but boy was it much easier than I thought. Russ was one of the easiest people to talk to, and it felt like I had known him for a while. This made it really easy to quickly work through the assembling of my schedule. While doing so, we encountered several problems with courses that were supposed to be offered, but were not being offered. We discovered what a problem this actually was; because out of about seventeen courses that I needed to fulfill a certain category, only one or two were actually being offered. This could be a big problem because it makes the student program planning sheets very hard to fill out. Russ also talked about how the requirements and suggested classes for each major change every year, which makes it even harder yet to fill out the student program planning sheets. Russ said that the changing requirements and the courses being offered, or in this case the courses that weren’t being offered, were causing big problems for several students and that the school or the registrar’s office really needed to look into fixing these problems.
Meeting with Russ didn’t directly increase my connection with other students in the Paul Smith’s community, but rather indirectly instead. Meeting with Russ helped me to get over my shyness, because I had to take the initiative and set up a meeting with him. The fact that the meeting was much easier than I thought it would be, showed me that taking the initiative to talk to people isn’t nearly as hard as I normally think it is. It is now easier to talk to other students as well as with faculty that I may not be totally familiar with.
My visit with Russ also helped to increase my understanding of the community around Paul Smith’s. This is because I had to research the topic, “What will the Adirondack Park be like in 2050” for my natural resources class. In order to obtain the best information, I decided to interview Russ, because I knew that he had a lot of experience in the Adirondacks. Russ’s knowledge of the economy also proved to be an added asset that made learning about the Adirondacks even easier. I asked Russ questions about how the Park would be environmentally, socially, and politically by the year 2050. Russ’s answers provided a truly unique view of the Adirondacks. One of the questions that I asked him was, “Will the condition of the environment get better or worse in the future?” Russ said that the optimist in him would like to think that the environment would get better, but he thought that the environment would eventually get worse because of our values as a society. He said that as long as we value things on a monetary scale, the environment would never get any better. Instead we need to value things on a scale of what they provide us. Russ gave the example of buying a banana for one dollar. Is that banana worth one dollar, or is it worth the nutrients and energy that it gives our body? Russ also provided some great insight to what the economy and society of the Adirondacks will look like in the future, as well as what they look like now.
A student who chooses to avoid meeting with their advisor is really missing out, because a good relationship with a college advisor can mean the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful college career. I know that I sure am glad that I met with Russ, because I definitely feel better about my college career going forward. I now know how lost I would be without a helpful academic advisor like Russ, because there are so many things to consider that I would not be able to possibly remember them all. I found a small article that highlights some of the importance of an academic advisor. It talks about how an advisor can be one of your best friends throughout college, and after meeting with Russ, I completely agree.
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