Think of what it would feel like if you went your entire college career taking the classes that your adviser recommended, only to learn your senior year that you'd taken the wrong courses, or needed more than you expected.
You'd probably be very angry, and would have every right to be. But it'd be easier to understand if your institution didn't provide an adequate amount of advisers or training for them. Then maybe more than one person could be at fault.
We all go through the same process every semester - make an appointment, wait a few days and get advised for a few minutes. Then scram.
With advisers having up to 900 students to advise per semester, it's no wonder that sometimes they could make a mistake. But that mistake could cost a student a whole lot of money if, in the worst-case scenario, they had to stay an entire semester to take the one class they didn't know they needed.
Granted, we all get those dreadful track sheets that explain which courses our major requires, but they can sometimes be difficult to understand.
And what about the standard attention students are supposed to get from their advisers? It used to be that advisers were part of the group of adults whose letters of recommendation mattered and got students jobs. Now, we're lucky if they can remember our name, even after looking at our track sheet.
Still, many of us find our advisers greeting us with a smile as we walk through the door, despite the fact they have to be stuck in their office for hours on end, the careers of hundreds of students in their hands.
It's this kind of dedication that further makes us wonder: What in the world is ASU thinking?
With the millions of dollars that are donated and raised every semester, it seems more than unfair that the University can't (or is unwilling to) hire enough advisers to lead its students.
Not to mention that, in an attempt to alleviate the poor ratio of advisers to students, ASU chooses to assign graduate students some of the jobs.
No offense to these grad students, but don't they have enough on their hands without dealing with other students' careers? Don't they want to get out of here, too?
We'll put up with crappy parking, large classes, even the crap that USG throws at us. But ASU is asking too much of students if they expect us to pay so much money for the classes we take and then don't provide us with the right people to tell us which ones we actually need.
