Academics Applied to the Real World!

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It really is amazing when you realize that what you learn in class actually does pay off in the real world! I just finished attending an all-staff Student Life meeting where I heard a presentation from the director of Financial Aid as well as from the Dean of Students about the Student Success Center. As I listened about financial aid, I learned why I can't get a subsidized loan for the fall as a grad student as well as that upon graduation, the 6 month grace period is still in place but the federal government will no longer be paying the interest during that time - isn't that just peachy?

Next, during the Student Success Center update, they talked about their visit from the consultant and shared his report. As I listened to that update, I realized that my material I learned about from last week in my Foundations of Academic Advising course about vision, mission, and goals for programs directly applied to this situation as did the advisor training information I'm about to read for this week. Afterwards I chatted with the Director of Advising about my coursework some more and he asked about my textbook. He mentioned that every one of their advisors has the book but they really only consult it when really necessary and he asked if I was reading it - well of course, I can't pass the course without reading it and we pretty much are reading the entire book, just various chapters each week! He said I may need to do a book report or some sort of training/update with them! Last week, I sent him the page number and reference of an item I found while reading that I thought could be of use to their emphasis on graduation since it was talking about a particular item that advisors handed out. So, I think I may get to help out more with the SSC.

Also I learned that a part of the Union will start being turned into a Veteran's Resource Center in the coming weeks. I'm very excited to see this happening because while at K-State as a graduate student senator, I fought to get funding from SGA during one of the meetings and it was a rather heated debate. Long story short, I will never forget the work that a few of my fellow senators and I did or the sight of seeing veterans surrounding the Big XII room. I'm excited to see the changes on this campus and to hopefully get to work with this sub-culture of students, as well.

More later and hope you're all enjoying your summer! 😊

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