When I decided to pursue a Ph.D., my friends thought that I was crazy. They asked me, “Why do you want to torture yourself like that?” They knew that it had been more than a decade since I completed my master's degree and entered the student affairs profession. Even though I found my true calling five years ago when I became an academic adviser, I had another epiphany while attending a NACADA Summer Institute. After attending several sessions, I was feeling motivated to solve all of the advising woes on my campus. However, I realized that I was missing one key ingredient that all of the presenters at the Summer Institute possessed: a doctorate. They were able to effect change on their campus in part because they had the educational credentials that faculty and upper-level administrators had. At that moment I realized that in order to make substantive changes on my campus I would need to continue my education by entering a doctoral program.
So I returned to campus renewed, refreshed, and resolved to enroll in the Ph.D. program in Educational and Counseling Psychology at the University of Louisville. Working full-time as an academic adviser while taking my doctoral classes gave me the opportunity to translate classroom theory into actual practice and to contribute to class discussions by sharing my real-world experiences. As I neared the completion of my third year in the program and finished most of my course work, I realized that the next step in the process was to complete the program's internship requirement, which the university catalog touts as an opportunity to obtain on-the-job experience. I saw it as three hundred hours of unpaid labor that I had to fit around my full-time job and family. Obviously I did not enter this endeavor with the best attitude.
he purpose of the internship program is to allow students to participate in programs that will complement their post-doctoral goals. Additionally, the internship site supervisor must possess a terminal degree. Because my post-graduation goal is to remain in advising, it was challenging to find an appropriate site because many of the directors of advising on our campus do not have doctorates. In my quest to find an internship site, I found that many people were skeptical of my career plans, saying, “You don't really intend to stay in advising with a doctorate. Aren't you going to get a real job?” How could I find a site when no one seemed to think that advising was a profession worthy of someone with a doctorate? Undaunted by the naysayers, I persevered and went up the advising food chain until I secured an internship working for the Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the Office of the Provost.
The charge I was given for my internship was to create a campus-wide advising group. This assignment seemed like a doable task because there had previously been such a group called the Counselor and Adviser Resource Exchange (CARE). In fact, I had even served as president of the group for two years before it unraveled. The CARE group started as a brown-bag forum for advisers from different areas to get together and talk about what was happening in their respective units. Unfortunately, advisers lost interest in the group. Fewer and fewer people came to the meetings, and no one was willing to serve on the governing board. In the final days of the CARE group, the meetings turned into a bunch of advisers sitting around a table venting about their problems but never taking the time to devise creative solutions. I wanted to create a new group with some teeth that could keep academic advisers on our campus informed. I was determined that this new group would not only identify problems but also have the will and power to implement solutions. I was in for a rude awakening.
At first, I ran into roadblocks, and nothing seemed to go well. There was a structural change in the provost's office, so my site supervisor changed jobs. I was the only person in the internship class from the student personnel track, so my professor did not really know what to do with me. I was doing a miserable job of getting the advisers on campus to buy into this new group. Adviser apathy was alive and well. Many of them had served on committees that offered up great resolutions, but actions were never taken. All of their hard work ended up on shelves gathering dust. What was worse, they turned their irritation with the administration on me.
So there I was with no supervisor, no professor, and no hope of successfully finishing my internship project. I knew that I had made some major mistakes along the way. My first mistake was not thoroughly researching what was involved with doing an internship. I should have identified clear-cut goals and outcomes and drafted a contract with both my professor and my site supervisor so that we were all on the same page. I had no one to blame but myself.
Eventually I got smart and turned to my adviser, a faculty member in my program, for help. Luckily, she agreed to take over the course component of my internship as an independent study. We tried to identify a new site, but I was not ready to give up on my goal of starting a new advising group. As fate would have it, a new associate provost of Undergraduate Affairs was appointed, and he agreed to allow me to continue my internship project under his supervision. With his leadership and mentorship, the project took on new momentum. He was able to provide guidance, encouragement, and commitment to helping me get the advising group off the ground.
Though I expect my students to come to me for help, it took me a while to realize that I needed to follow my own advice and get the assistance I needed. I realized the hard way that I could not do it on my own. I had forgotten how much a good adviser and caring faculty member can help. I needed that guidance and understanding. By the way, this realization has confirmed that I am making the right decision by deciding to continue my career in advising because it will allow me to continue to help other people.
My internship is not yet over, and I am still trudging through a quagmire of administrative red tape to get the advising group off the ground. I have also become involved in a debate about the best advising model for our campus. I am realizing that this internship has really been an invaluable learning opportunity for me. Even though I did not think it would be a simple task to start this advising group, I did not fully appreciate how many people (faculty, deans, students, and staff) it takes to successfully launch any new venture. I also did not foresee how many other issues would surface as a result of my quest. This internship turned out to be far more tedious than I expected, but I have learned that it takes a delicate hand and a lot of patience to pull a campus together. And my journey continues.
Advising is a profession worthy of the best and the brightest. I encourage other advisers to continue their education so that we truly can have a voice at the upper echelons of the university. We, the advisers, need to be among those who enact change and provide vision on our campuses. We are in the unique position to see the trials and tribulations students go through everyday. My advice to others in my situation is this: ask for help when you need it, don't get discouraged, and never give up. As I sit here and reflect upon my experiences, I am reminded of a line from a song by the Grateful Dead: “What a long, strange trip it's been.”