The Most Important Thing I Learned Advising Students

One of the most important things I learned from advising students is that people often don’t need more options.

They need fewer options and better orientation.

Students often arrived with a long list of possibilities:

Which program should I choose? Which course should I drop?

Should I change my major? Should I stay in co-operative education?

What happens if I take another term?

At first, it was tempting to answer by adding more information.

Here are the policies. Here are the deadlines. Here are six possible pathways.

But more information did not always create clarity. Sometimes it created more confusion.

The real work of advising was helping someone understand:

That is orientation.

Orientation does not make the decision for you. It helps you see the decision in the right context.

A student might believe they are deciding between ten possible futures.

After a good conversation, they may realize they are really choosing between two reasonable next steps.

The options did not disappear. They became organized.

This lesson extends far beyond university advising.

When we feel uncertain, we often respond by gathering more:

But the problem may not be a lack of options.

The problem may be that we have not decided what matters enough to guide the choice.

Sometimes progress begins by asking:

What decision are you making harder than it needs to be?

What might become clearer if you reduced the number of options and improved your orientation?

Until next time,

Greg k. Campbell