Advising First-Year Students

Issues Particular to Advising First-Year Students

Acknowledging Adjustments

One of the most important things we are trying to teach students as they make the adjustment from high school to college is active and independent thinking. Students often turn to advisors in their first year for answers, much as they may have turned to their parents for direction or discipline. Rather than act as parent to advisees, the role of the advisor is to ask critical questions that can help the student gain the skills she needs to make appropriate academic choices and then to take responsibility for those choices.

It is helpful to acknowledge some of the adjustments most first-year students experience. Offering them the opportunity to share their concerns is the first step toward helping them recognize the transition they must make. The following concerns have been voiced most frequently by first-year students, and are helpful to keep in mind when advising:

• Did Mount Holyoke make a mistake when they let me in?
• I'm not doing well in a course and I'm embarrassed to see the instructor outside of class.
• My parents are paying my tuition; how should I respond to the pressure I feel to pursue the courses they have selected for me?
• Should I know now what my major will be and what I want to do when I graduate?
• I'm overwhelmed by the range of choices, and feel incapable of making any decision.
• I've never been on my own or studied without my parents telling me to study. How can I structure all of this "free," unscheduled time.
• I'm worried about being in a women's college, and I'm already missing the co-ed environment.
• My homesickness is beyond anything I had anticipated. How can I cope with this?
• I'm worried about adapting to residential hall living. Where can I go if things go wrong?
• I was a high school superstar, and now I am only another struggling first-year student. I'm sure to fail for the first time in my life.

It is always helpful to acknowledge these concerns from the outset, creating a comfortable arena for open discussion. In responding to these concerns, however, advisors are often most helpful when they alert students to the value of what we must do in our own work: networking. Students must seek answers from a broad range of resources.

While pre-major advisors are the chief resource for academic guidance, and will remain so through the sophomore year until students declare their majors, it is important to refer students to the larger network of support and information across campus.

The information in this handbook should prove useful both in providing some of the answers and referring students to other resources to address the more complicated issues.