Advising the Advisees

Got up this morning early so I could go to ABAC Huamark campus. I was to advise students along with 40 or so other Business English teachers. Advising now is a simple process. The students come, fill out their schedule and take it to one of us instructors. We check things out to insure the student has all fulfilled all requirements, does not have any test conflicts and then sign the schedule to OK it. Simple, right?

I arrived to Huamark at aroung 0645. Since it was raining the traffic was a bit backed up so I had the taxi driver turn on Soi 44 and come down to the ABAC road, making a U-turn about a kilometer to the right. No one was around so I went to the 7-11 and bought The Nation Newspaper. Saw an article about The Nation signing an agreement to teach journalism at Hua Chiaow University. This is a Chinese University just up the road from us. Wonder why The Nation did not sign with ABAC. Wierd. Hua Chiaow just does not seem to be a credible school from what I have seen and heard.

No body around so I walked around in the rain to make sure I was at the right place. Finally saw our secretary and followed her to the Hall of Fame. A few teachers were already in side. It was around 0745 when I arrived to the Hall. By 0815 or so we had our locations and were ready for our students.

When the students came in, they showed their ID cards to the secretary and her staff then picked up their forms. They would then go outside to find the courses they want. These were posted along the outside of the Hall. The students would be given a number corresponding to one of us teachers.

Two teachers sat at a table with the appropriate schedules to use to insure accuracy. Once it started it was just a matter of waiting for the students to arrive.

If we did not have any students, we just sat around and visited, read the newspaper or starred at those who had students to advise.





It was important that we checked for requirements and conflicts or else the student would not be allowed to register next week. Sooooo, we checked and checked and made sure all was ok.




Most of the time, I tried to get a feel for how the students were doing in their classes. What I saw was mostly between 2.0 and 2.5 GPAs. Most of these 2.0 students were just lazy.






Ajarn J looks to make sure the student did not make a mistake on how she filled out the form. This was one of my students so I told Ajarn J to make sure he took care of her. Of course, he did. This was Ms. P. I have been teasing her for sometime about her name as it has a different tone to it than how I pronounce it. She also loaned me an umbrella yesterday to insure I did not get wet for my 0900 class. Ajarn J better take care of her!




Ajarn JD goes over the schedule with an advisee. We both ended up with about the same number of students to advise.







Yours truly doing a bit of the advising thing. Had to get the ABAC catalog out on this one to insure she had taken all of her prerequisites. No problem so I signed it and she was on her way.