Our recent transition to remote delivery of services due to the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order, has been extremely challenging to say the least. My counseling colleagues and I were suddenly asked to continue serving students the way we always have, but without access to all the assortment of programs we need for a typical counseling appointment. During the first week of this transition, while our management team and Tech services frantically tried to get us access, counselors trudged on, doing the best they could and working without—meeting with students daily, giving them any and all information necessary, using our personal space/printers/computers/paper and spending as much time as we could assuring students that it was going to be OK and that we were all in this together.
I am proud to work with folks on this campus who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and maintain such a fantastic work ethic amidst a crisis. It is easy to remember the reason any Citrus College employee works where they do when you’re a counselor, because we are the front line; students turn to us daily and in the specific capacity of helping them see their academic and professional goals come to fruition. This is why I felt compelled to write a response to the recent opinion piece from student, Taylor Lara.
Given all I’ve mentioned thus far, imagine our disappointment when that article surfaced, alluding to a less than ideal experience with some of the counseling services on this campus.
I want to make sure any students or members of the community who may have similar sentiments understand something important in this context.
The nature of a community college counselors’ work is an organic process and is entirely dependent on the information any given student brings to an appointment. In my 16+ years in this role, I would say I have met less than 50 students over all those years who came into their first counseling appointment knowing precisely what they wanted to study, whether or not they wanted to continue their education after their time at Citrus, and if so, exactly where they planned to go. Even more rare, was the student who had all of this information from the get-go and then actually followed through with these plans with no changes along the way.
This scenario represents a tiny percentage of actual students seen. Most students (including myself when I was freshly out of high school) do not know these two vital pieces of information at the age of 18, or if they do, it frequently changes and often more than once or twice. Given this, the typical student might have two, three or more iterations of a “student educational plan” on file due to changing their course of study or transfer destination, etc. Incidentally, I haven’t even mentioned all the other possible factors (e.g. shifting work hours, emergency care for younger siblings, etc.) that could change or delay a student’s class schedule or timeline at community college OR result in constantly evolving answers to their specific questions.
Counselors “get” that this is part of our job, that is, to move/switch gears/give a different set of directions each time the student has a different revelation about where their lives are going. As to all those other unknowns and factors, we get that “life happens” and of course, this will impact the advice that’s ultimately dispensed to the student. We do not begrudge students for changing directions. We understand it’s human nature. It is our job to help guide the student regardless and without judgment.
I think the opinion piece to which I am addressing, was an unfair assessment. This student “switched gears”. And it is absolutely expected that he would have received different advice and information as a result. A different major program and/or transferring to a different university, for example, could very well equate to a difference in minimum units required.
To be clear, it is not my intention to dismiss this student’s experience. Are counselors human and make mistakes? Of course. It goes without saying that we are ALL human, thus have all inherited that ability regardless of vocation or lot in life. But, in my opinion, a mistake was not made in this case. My hope with this article is that Lara will appreciate another shared human quality that I believe we can all strive for and will only make our existence together (through this pandemic crisis and beyond) the best it can be…and that is the ability to be self-aware and take personal responsibility for any given situation.
Taylor Lara, (early) congratulations on your impending acceptance to the University of La Verne! I attended there for my first master’s degree and had a wonderful experience. It is my sincerest hope that you will too.
— Lisa Villa, Citrus College Counseling faculty, Curriculum chair
