This blog is full of rants and raves about problems with my advisors. In general I have found advisors to be a pain and a general road block to academic success in most situations. It seems as though I have adapted to one of my advisors in a way that has formed a much more functional relationship.

Its not the typical thing that I think about most of the time, and it did not even occur to me until I realized that I was going to have to be assigned a replacement advisor that I had become so attached to my current advisor. Dr. Allen is my advisor for my B.S. in Psychology program. I went through 3 other advisors before her. My first advisor was assigned when I declared my major. Unfortunately, we didn’t exactly get along. She wanted to advise me by phone only and give my advising PIN by phone as well, and our schedules didn’t really match. I requested that she be replaced, and she was replaced by another advisor, but unfortunately, he left the university a semester later and I was finally assigned to Dr. Allen.

Dr. Allen has basically given my free-reign over designing my curriculum and even supported my goofier academic endeavors (such as becoming a sociology minor and taking an entire course sequence to take an SPSS course). With Dr. Allen, I have always known that I was in charge of my academic plans, but she has always been there, advising me of potential pitfalls and problems that can occur. She has been like the perfect advisor to me.

Now, as I prepare to graduate, and work towards a B.A. in Sociology during the summer I face the fact that there are only a few weeks left with Dr. Allen as my advisor. Actually, in a few days I expect to be notified of who will replace her as my advisor of record.

While it is true that I probably could have functioned without the support of an academic advisor, it has been very reassuring to have access to Dr. Allen when I needed her, especially when I couldn’t quite take care of things with the registrar’s office the way that I needed to.