Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Just one more tale about academic advising before I close the subject for the time being: on the second to the last day of the advising period, a student, Salvador, called up to schedule his session.

Our secretary asked me to handle it, but I refused. I said that the guy was an incoming third year Business Administration student and I had no idea about the requirements of the subjects he was supposed to be taking, and I knew he was not regular.

In fact, this student right now has the distinction of being the only person to fail Trigonometric Applications four times. The last time was this just recently concluded term, and the second time was with me as his teacher.

At the time he was my student, he usually just showed up during exams, and then he’d behave, as his classmates would call it, like a giraffe, straining his neck to look at his classmates’ papers.

I guess he hasn’t changed his ways since then. In fact, we had the same discussion at the end of the previous term, when again he showed up for advising when there was no one but me to deal with him, and I refused again based on his major.

So let me rephrase that: he hadn’t LEARNED since then, except to call first now.

And his behavior doesn’t limit itself to classes alone. It had been posted since the week before that academic advising for the Director of the School of Business would only be from the first to the third day of the advising period. Why didn’t he make an effort to go on those days, especially if his excuse for calling was because they were leaving for the US two days hence?

He called again later, and got the Guidance Counselor instead of the secretary, and repeated the same inquiries. I told him (through her) the same answers: he would have to wait until the Director of the School of Business returned before he could go for advising.

Much later there was another call. This was from the Registrar’s Office, but it was because Salvador contacted them.

They requested that since I was the only one among the four academic advisers present, I could approve the subjects that Salvador would be taking for the next term. The Registrar and the secretary said they would help me figure out what subjects he could and couldn’t take.

Wow, he was going to wheedle his way out of being a dutiful student again, and he was going to drag me into assisting him. Except that I had the choice of not going on the last day of academic advising. The Registrar and the secretary might have given in to his excuses and his slacking but not me.

I want him to learn that there are inconvenient (for all concerned) consequences to his inaction that he could not just talk his way out of, that the rules could not always be bent to his benefit, and that he should pay attention to the schedules the school sets next time.

One more point about this I’ll raise tomorrow. For now, class dismissed.