My high school was small (~200 students), and very college-oriented, so my guidance counselor was a lot of help. He in fact was able to dredge up all sorts of information on scholarships and applications, as well as contacts within the different admissions departments. The only problem I had with him was the senility. He always came off as rather lost and out of touch, somewhat forgetful. But the sweetest guy you would ever want to meet, regardless of all that.
Wow, my counselor never talked about college. I only remember meeting with my counselor once- to discuss my schedule junior year. I had a full load of academic classes, plus art which is a passion of mine. At the time I intended to persue art in college.
My counselor told me the art classes were full (and for some reason, I knew for a fact they were not) and that I should take typeing because that is a good career skill. I’d worked in data entry for a couple of summers at the point, and I could out-type just about anyone. I told him “I do not want to take typeing, I want to take art. I do not want to be a typist, I want to be an artist”. He then told me to take yearbook. He said my classes all looked to hard and that yearbook would be a good break. Yeah, just what an art-geek needs, to be put in a class full of preps making a horribly overpriced yearbooks that I wouldn’t even buy. Beside, I didn’t want a break- I wanted to persue and learn in the field I love. I told him, no, I do not want to take yearbook, I want to take art.
It finally took my mom calling him to convince him that I really did want to take art. Magically, a space opened up for me once it was an adult talking to him.
I remember the first time I met with my college counselor… I told her I was looking into small liberal arts colleges, and the first two schools she came up with were Michigan and Northwestern. Later on in the process (when I had expanded my criteria a bit) she told me which schools were safeties/mid ranges/reaches in a way that contradicted college guides and my instincts. My instincts were correct.
Then just before my senior year, we switched counselors when the old one retired. Now, I had a counselor who was absolutely obsessed with prestige. She got quite upset when I told her I had decided not to apply to any ivies, and after I got my replies back, she was not only disappointed but angry that I decided to go to a state school’s honors program, despite having been accepted by 4 or 5 private colleges/universities.
Heh. I’m on my third guidance counselor, going into senior year.
Freshman year: Wonderfully sweet woman, but very ditzy, and it was her first year. The pre-IB program was in its second year, and IB in general was already very unpopular at my school. She ended up siding with some other counselors at my school, taking a negative view of the program. “But you can take some AP courses this year, and the other counselors don’t like pre-IB. It won’t get you anywhere.”
Sophomore year: By this point, my grades had begun their slow decline to B’s and C’s. This counselor had eagerly snatched up the IB, pre-IB, and AP students, as they were the ones who applied and go into the ‘good’ schools. My contact with her, throughout the entire year, was limited to one scheduling conference. She called 5 students down at a time. “Are you taking AP courses next year?” “No, I’m going to go into IB.” “You shouldn’t, IB is no good. It’s for hippies.” “Thank you very much.”
Junior year: I now have the best counselor ever. He (gasp) called me down to meet me! In the beginning of the year! And acknowledged me as a person, not a potential applicant to schools X, Y, and Z! We started talking about colleges, and I told him flat-out that no, I don’t have any desire to push myself to get into an Ivy league school; I want a very small liberal arts school. “There are tons of high-quality schools like that out there. Let’s try and narrow it down a little based on what you want, OK?”
Of course, him being my 3rd guidance counselor does kinda speak for itself…
There’s a great training film from the late 40’s or early 50’s that I’ve got on a DVD upstairs.
GC gets a call from a guy looking for someone. Calls Boy into office. Tells Boy he has this great job in a shoe store for him. Kid says, “I was just fired from there”.
GC gives kid a long speech which essentially boils down to “The shoe store is the best you can hope for. You’re just going to have to learn to be happy with it.” Stark Ravingly Insane. Not one word about going to school or trying to be better, just “you have to learn to love the job you get stuck with”.
Close with GC giving a speech about how Boy has been working at shoe store for five years and is now the manager. Shows footage of the Boy/Man (looking like he had a full frontal lobotomy) working in the store under the approving glow of the old man who owns the store.
AAaaaaaaiiiiiiiieeeeeee!!!
My daughter’s guidance counselor did a pretty good job. She was (rightfully) a little reluctant when my daughter told her she wanted to go early decision very early on in the process, but agreed after it was clear that American University was the place for her. She also insisted Lisa take calculus when she would have preferred to have easier math as a senior.
My own, however, was a different story. I went to a small school on Easter Long Island (120 in my graduating class, the largest in the history of the school) and the counselor was a boob. I didn’t really need him for high school stuff – he just signed my schedule – but he was useless for college. Any time he had a good student, he immediately suggested his own alma mater (Hartwick – good school, but really). He was so pleased when he suggested a school to me and found out that not only had I heard of it, but I had already made a campus visit.
But the big thing was the New York Times. I delivered the paper in the school for three years. Didn’t particularly like it, and the money was lousy. I would come around to everyone on my lunch hour. The counselor subscribed the entire time. I’d drop it off in his office as I rushed through the school trying to finish so I could have something of a recess period.
Toward the end of my senior year, he complained to a group of students about how hard his job was. Then he focused on me and told me he already got the Times at home and only took it at school so that he could have a chance to talk to me.
Considering the fact he had rarely said a word to me in all those times other than “hello,” and that I was in the middle of a job that ate into my free time, I thought that was the stupidest thing a counselor could do.
I told mine I was interested in something in law or medicine. He said in a disinterested way “Well, you know your looking at at least 12 more years of school then.” Gee. Thanks for the encouragement.
“Girls, marry someone very old and very rich”
Actually, this advice caused my mother to pull me out of the public school system and send me to private school.
When meeting with the guidance counselor to determine my courses prior to freshman year, I was planning to take algebra II and geometry as a freshman, then trig and analytical geometry as a sophmore, then calc as a junior, and advanced calc as a senior. Math was always one of my strong suits.
The guidance counselor’s “advice” was “well, we offer those advanced math classes for some of the socially inept kids, but you wouldn’t want a young girl to take so many math classes–she’d be labeled as a nerd by all her peers.”
And this was 1980!
Mom called the principal to complain and was basically given the same “advice.” Way to go mom for pulling me out of that school!
I had an awesome guidance counselor. After reading some of the stuff in this thread, I wonder if she’d consent to being cloned and placed in every high school. . .
Once, at my school, a young girl(I think she was 15 or 16), somehow ended up talking with her counsellor about her boyfriend. The boyfriend was 16, had dropped out of school and had his own place. She described how she had sex with him and some other things. The counsellor, without the knowledge of the girl, went and called her parents afterwards. Of course the story got out, and because of it my girlfriend at the time refused to talk to her counsellor about some real problems that she was having, because she didn’t trust them.
The counselor in my first high school did NOT believe that girls should take shop. She signed me up for Home Ec and typing, despite my protests that I already knew how to cook and sew and was not interested in a secretarial position. Worse, my parents did not back me up. I learned nothing new in Home Ec. I’m glad I learned to touch type, though I’m sure that if my parents and GC had known that I’d mainly use it to play computer games, the would have been much less enthusiastic about me taking it.
In my second high school, the counselor was a bit more accepting of my dreams, and I was allowed to take the electives that I wanted, as long as I satisfied the basic course requirements.
I set a record with my PSAT score. My first counselor asked me if she could list me as one of her students. I looked her straight in the eye and told her not to, reminding her that she’d done everything in her power to keep me from the courses I wanted to take. This was petty and childish of me, and it felt SOOOOOOO good!
I’ve actually been seeing all 3 (now four, with one added for this coming year) guidance counselors throughout my three years in high school…I start my senior year August 14. Because of some certain needs I have and the 504 program I’m on and so forth, meeting with them often is pretty much a necessity.
And I’m lucky, because 2 of the 3 counselors I know (I have never met this new person) are really good. There’s the female counselor who used to be assigned to me when it was alphabetical, who was very nice, explained requirements so that I knew them, and was never wrong on anything that I know of. And the male counselor, who’s my counselor now that we’ve switched to grade level. He’s also a good person, and his advice is sound.
The third counselor, the second female one, though…she’s pretty interesting. I don’t know why, but she doesn’t seem to understand the requirements for the basic diploma and the college-bound diploma; she keeps telling my friends that two years of foreign language aren’t required for the college-bound, when quite clearly, they are. She keeps telling kids they’re only cut out for community colleges when they’d clearly be able to go beyond that, and really has some bizarre ideas about what out-of-state universities teach that’s so horrible compared to instate.
Neither of my other counselors do that. Both are very supportive of a students’ goals and ambitions, and willing to help out anytime. I’ve been very lucky.
I never once spoke to the guidance counselor in my high school. I skipped all my appointments and never got called on 'em. I lost my faith in the school guidance counselors back in grade school, when I was being beaten up on a regular basis and otherwise abused by my classmates. Eventually, one day, I was riding in the backseat of the schoolbus and three other kids beat me up, and the principal gave all of us detention and the guidance counselor told me it was my own fault for not trying to fit in with my peers. Apparently I dressed funny, and I spent too much time reading and not enough time socializing.
Of course I dressed funny, my dad was an owner-operator truck driver with a broken arm who had only been getting jobs one week out of four for months and my mom had to make all my clothes because we were fucking poor. What the hell? And of course I read a lot, I’ve always liked to read. And of course I didn’t socialize much, because my peers liked to beat the crap out of me!
“You should wait until junior or senior year to take Humanities.”
I heard this advice from my junior-high-school and high-school counselor at a small private school, when I was about to register for ninth grade. This advice was delivered to the entire assembly of eight-graders, not to me in particular. Because of this advice, I wasted my time taking Homemaking in the fall semester of ninth grade. I ended up taking Humanities in the fall semester of tenth grade, and I did well in the class. It turned out that there was no rule against taking Humanities in ninth or tenth grade. I wish that I had taken Humanities in ninth grade instead of tenth.
Please excuse the typo - I meant to write “eighth-graders” instead of “eight-graders.”
For a detailed description of why this was bad advice, see the “What is your biggest regret in life?” thread in the MPSIMS forum.
I learned very quickly to ignore my HS Guidance Counselor when he grossly miscalculated my class rank and never noticed.
originally posted by Chimera
If the hypothetical kid likes working in the shoe store, what’s wrong with that? It’s a steady job which puts bread on the table.
Why should everyone have to go to college?