My NACADA Experience

It has been a couple of months since I attended the NACADA (National Academic Advising Association) Regional conference in San Diego, but I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect about my experience. Once I had made the decision not to attend NASPA I knew I wanted to attend the NACADA conference and I am so glad I chose to attend it. I do think I would have benefited from attending NASPA, but thinking about what path I want to take after graduation, I knew NACADA was the right decision for me. Before I attended I was really nervous that I was going by myself and I was even more nervous about putting myself out there and getting to know people and networking. I am normally a very reserved person, but I knew that I had to open myself up and talk to different people. I was ultimately really proud of my ability to get to know a good amount of different people. I really did learn a lot from the conference and that is what I want to reflect on:

1. I realized how much I really do want to have a career in academic advising. In talking to all the different people at the conference and attending the different sessions I see that I really am passionate about this work and it is something I could see myself doing for the rest of my life. I just get really excited about working with students to ensure a successful college experience and working toward graduation. I also feel that I implement my passion for Student Affairs, and specifically student life and campus involvement, into academic advising. This passion became very clear to me during the conference and I appreciate having the opportunity to attend the conference and I'm so grateful it was in San Diego, so I didn't have to pay for lodging.

2. I learned about my listening style: people centered. One of the sessions I attended discussed all the different types of listening styles and we had to fill out a short questionnaire to see what our listening style is. It was just interesting for me to learn that I am people-center (even though I kind of expected it) and to learn the pros and cons of my listening style. It actually made me quite happy to learn what I was people-centered because I really do feel that it's really important when working with students. I am so interested in learning about different students and hearing their story, so it made me feel good to see the pros of my listening style. It was also helpful to see the cons so I know what I need to work on when working with students.

3. One of the cons of a people-centered listener is the amount of time that it takes. This was my third and final major realization from the NACADA conference: If I do get a job in academic advising, I am really going to struggle with not being able to talk to students for an hour at a time to learn their story. I realized this during the same session actually during a role play activity that we did. We were in groups of three and each person took turns being the advisor, the student, and the observer. I was the first one to play the advisor and I had a student who was a Biology major but was not doing well in her biology classes. We had like three minutes to talk to this student. I spent time getting to know the student's story and barely had time to even begin to resolve the issue. When the other two women, who are currently academic advisors, took their turns as advisors they actually came close to reaching a solution in the three minutes. I realized right then that I am going to have to adjust the way I work with students because I am now going to have as much time with students as I do now. When I meet with a student right now I have an hour for the first session and thirty minutes for follow-ups. I know this is not going to be the case when I'm working with students as an academic advisor because I am going to have a lot more students that I'm working with. I need to find a balance between appreciative advising (which is basically what I do now) and academic advising. I do still see value in using some appreciative advising but I am going to have to be very aware of time. The other issue I know I will face is letting myself tell a student what to do more directly. Right now in the work that I do, we are not supposed to give advice to the student. We are supposed to let the student come up with solutions on their own and guide them along the way. Since this is what I'm used to, I need to get used to telling the student, you might consider doing this and that, basically being more direct. I know I can do this, it is just going to take some getting used to. Plus, I'm saying all this not even knowing if I'm going to get a position as an academic advisor, but at least I am aware of the challenges I will face and I'll be prepared for that question during an interview if it comes up.

Overall, my experience at NACADA was very rewarding. I learned a lot about the field and about myself. It was difficult to figure out which sessions to go to because I don't know what populations of students I could be working with, so I just tried to go to a variety of sessions so I could information on a little bit of everything. I am glad I took the opportunity to attend the conference.