No proper guidance

If freshmen come to Florida A&M with no idea of what they want to major in, where is their outlet to discuss what they want to do? This dilemma plagues many students who are not quite sure what their future career plans may be.

Student advisement is supposed to provide counseling. Advisement is supposed to ensure a student is on the right path in his or her area of study. Unfortunately, help with choosing your classes won’t always lead to help in career choices. What if the path you choose is not really where you want to go?

Many students who are unsure about their career goals start college in the School of General Studies, wasting their time and money. If there were a better guidance system in place, the general studies department would probably have fewer students.

Florida A&M does not have a fully functional, school-wide guidance program in place to prepare students for life after college. That is certainly a problem. College is supposed to prepare us to be successful, driven adults.

Without proper guidance the result can be confused, misguided graduates. Even though we kind of get the hang of picking and choosing our courses by the fourth year, we need more than class advisement.

Students need counselors to help them figure out their career goals. They need to be supplied with information regarding a major to help them achieve those goals. Not being able to provide an adequate support system for students is simply setting them up for failure.

The current guidance system at FAMU needs to be evaluated and changed in the troubled areas. Otherwise, we may have more confused, rather than capable, FAMU graduates.

We should strive to place more emphasis on the avenues available to assist students in making the transfer from the scholastic world to the real world. Career counseling must be provided in each individual college.

Jarred McArthur, 21, is a journalism student from Orlando, Fl. He can be reached at jarmcar187@aol.com.