JaBari is an Academic Advisor at the University of Southern California. He walks us through a busy day and explains why he gets so much joy out of counseling up to 15 students per day. JaBari also believes that it is very important for college students to find a mentor in an area they are interested in and always be open to new opportunities for growth.
Transcript
>> My name is [Inaudible] Brown, and I'm an academic advisor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. What goes into the day of an academic advisor? Well, basically we start off, and we are working with the students to make sure that they're going to do a couple of things. One, to ensure that they graduate by their targeted degree date; two, to make sure that they meet their goals and establish realistic goals for the time they graduate from college, and this can include anything from studying abroad to incorporating internships to core curricular opportunities to meeting mentors and just the types of things; and three, we make sure that all of their questions are answered by the university so they have someone they can talk to and run ideas by or get their questions addressed, interpret policies and procedures, or connecting with the services or people that they need to be connected with and to. Well, during our peak period, we can see up to about 15 students a day. When we're in our [inaudible] period, we see at minimum about eight students for half hour each, for each appointment. So that's what we do most of the days. On a slow day, we can see anywhere from two to no students, but we're working on other projects in terms of keeping up with students' records, contacting them if they need anything outstanding, doing reports for the university and making sure that our students are on track to graduate, and identifying services and scholarships that students can apply for. To be a good academic advisor, you must really care for your students and care about the service that you provide for them because it is a service, and one of the best things about being an academic advisor is you get to see how students develop from the time they're freshmen or their first semester at the university until they graduate, and we're fortunate in our department that we work with the same students for the entire time that they're at the university. So I still keep in touch with students that I first advised maybe ten years ago when I first became an academic advisor. We still keep in touch. They keep me aware of what's going on in their lives, and it's a good relationship that we're able to maintain.
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