January 19th, 2017

For awhile now I've had some questions emerging about my schooling. Nothing serious, just things concerning my credits and requirements and the like. Today I made an appointment with my advisor and headed in to her office to get everything squared away.

My advisor is this insanely sweet lady named Erin Mallory. She's always been super helpful whenever it comes to figuring out what classes to take or with giving recommendations and such. When I got there, we sat down in front of a computer in one of the labs and started looking over my classes.

During my two years at College of DuPage, I finished all of my GE's (General Education courses). Or, as Columbia calls them, my LAS cores (Liberal Arts & Science courses). All but one: the Writing Intensive Req. (This one is required to be taken at Columbia). I also took several graphic design courses alongside my GE's while I was at CoD, so when I transferred I also already had some classes towards my Graphic Design BA (GD BA) completed.

When I met with Erin, I was curious as to how many more GD BA classes I needed to take in addition to what was on the requirements list. Erin once again was just great, because she asked the GD's head teacher to meet with us to help decide what my best course of action should be.

Jeff, who is a huge CoD supporter, thought that I was more than qualified with my design skills to be taking some of the classes on my requirements list. He ended up waiving me out of about five classes! After cancelling out the GD classes I'd already taken at CoD, I was left with only about six GD classes left on my BA's requirements list. In addition to those, he informed me that I needed to take a handful of other GD electives to contribute to my GD BA classes. He gave me some recommendations of which ones would best suit me, but ultimately he obviously left the choice up to me.

After Jeff left, I was surprised and proud of how far along I was towards getting my degree. Erin told me that after I finished with those classes, all that was left was to take more college-wide electives to get me to the magic number: 120 credit hours.

I thanked Erin for everything and left the school feeling absolutely elated. I knew that I was on the right path for my schooling, but after help from Jeff and Erin I was so pleasantly surprised to see how much closer to graduating I was! I'm sure many of you can agree when I say that school can be very overwhelming and stressful. So it felt so very wonderful to have things made clear. To have the end in sight. I am so excited to finish my college journey. It has been a long and sometimes hard road, but I am so proud of how far I've come and where I'm headed! :)