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

The past few days I’ve been here in the faculty room dealing with the academic advising and adjustment of the students. This is because with the exception of David for a few hours Tuesday to Thursday (he’s not yet here today and I’m not sure if he’ll show up) I was the only faculty around with any experience of dealing with the subjects the students could or could not take.

Some of the students had to change the subjects that were listed when they first went for academic advising five weeks ago (during the tenth week of classes – right now it’s the week after the end of the fourteen-week term), because of failures. I myself know that I’m responsible for at least twenty of those.

Others say they only found out about the academic advising when the Registrar’s office told them about it when they went to assess the tuition they should pay for the incoming term. More like they put it off during the whole week it was going on, despite the fact that majority of their batch mates were already ensuring that they’d be in the same classes for the second trimester.

Or they weren’t going to class at all. Chances are these are the same people who failed some of their subjects.

There were only two exceptions, both Engineering students whose “regular” subjects I didn’t have to change, either because he passed all of his subjects, or the subjects he DID fail are not prerequisites to the classes they’re taking next term. The second one is Roland. I may go more in-depth about what happened to him this last term in another post.

I accepted all of them, whether they were Business Administration, Computer Science, Information Management or Communication Arts students. I had a basic knowledge of the general education subjects that are offered this term though.

I drew the line at one thing though: filling out the list of subjects and signing the forms of the Business Administration students who did not go for their academic advising during the week assigned.

Mainly this was because the first person in that category to ask for “advice” was Pancho, one of the students I failed in Trigonometry two terms ago for barely making an effort. He only showed up during exams (something I now regret telling them was not forbidden) and at those times would strain his neck trying to copy from his classmates, to their amusement and mine.

In short, I did not want to make things easy for him. After all, he was already a second year student and he should know what things he’s required to do every term if he wants to eventually graduate. It didn’t help that when the secretary asked him why he didn’t go for academic advising before, he said he forgot.

I told the secretary that first advising should be the school director, Sir Joel, who wasn’t there on that day (Wednesday), because I said I did not have a familiarity with the major subjects they could or could not take.

And I’ll have to cut this tale short for now. I’m also not sure if I’ll be able to continue tomorrow, since I will be attending an overnight eighteenth birthday swimming party later in Los Baños and I’m not sure what time we’ll be finished with that.

So until next time, class dismissed.