Advising
Your Orientation Week advising appointment is where you fill out your course card and meet your academic adviser. Have you chosen too few or too many classes? Are you signed up for nothing but music courses? Your academic adviser is there to politely state what any upperclassmen will tell you: be reasonable, and do your research. He or she does not have the final say on what you take. All the decision making -- choosing courses, making sure your distribution requirements and departmental prerequisites get covered -- is yours.
The academic advising system, in this writer's opinion, is an ambitious one -- keep in mind that no academic adviser can understand (in the 15 minutes allotted for discussing your course load) all your life goals in one sitting, or have a ready-reference in their head of every course and professor at the University . . . so feel free to get a second opinion from professors, deans and random upperclassmen. But please don't ignore friendly advice: when they tell you not to take seven classes, or to take "Intro Rocket Science" before "Advanced Rocket Science," believe them!
