What advising is and is not
An adviser helps you build a degree plan, understand requirements and policy, weigh options, and connect to resources. They are not there to choose your life for you or to be the reason you registered late. The best outcomes come from students who bring a draft and a question, not a blank page.
Who your adviser is
Most students start with a professional first-year adviser and move to a faculty adviser in the major later. You can see who yours is in MyPorter. If the fit is poor, you can usually request a change — advising is a working relationship, and a bad one is worth fixing.
Prepare before the meeting
Run your degree audit and read it. Draft next term’s schedule with alternates. Write down your two or three real questions — a course sequence question, a "should I add a minor" question, a "I’m thinking about changing majors" question. Fifteen prepared minutes is worth an hour of wandering.
Meet at least once a term, before registration
Some programs require it (an advising hold you must clear); all of them benefit from it. The pre-registration meeting is where a missing prerequisite or a once-a-year course gets caught while there is still time to plan around it.
Bring the hard stuff too
Advisers hear "I’m failing a class," "I might need to take a semester off," "I don’t think this major is right" all the time, and they know which office helps with each. Raising it early gives you options; raising it at the end of the term gives you damage control.
Keep your own record
After each meeting, write down what you decided and any exception you were told was approved. Verbal approvals do not update the system — follow up in writing if a substitution or waiver does not appear on your audit within a few weeks.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.