I wrote a personal story on my experiences with the Citrus College counseling office and offered some advice to get a second opinion before attempting to transfer and received a response from the Citrus College Counseling faculty Curriculum Chair Lisa Villa.
Villa gave her opinion on how I described the operations of the counseling office.
“I think the opinion piece to which I am addressing, was an unfair assessment,” Villa said in her letter. “This student ‘switched gears’ and it is absolutely expected that he would have received different advice and information as a result.”
I want to clarify to Villa that I’ve been a Citrus student for 2 years and have never switched my major, communications.
In the last two years, I’ve had three different counseling meetings with three different counselors. I believe those meetings may have led to the misinformation I received, not understanding I was looking to transfer and graduate with an ADT degree.
My aim was to graduate from Citrus College. I may have not always been vocal about my academic goals to counselors, which may have created a misunderstanding. I figured my student education plan would have detailed that fact to counselors viewing it during each counseling meeting.
I say this to anyone who goes to a counselor: learn from this misunderstanding between the counselors I by going into counseling meetings and vocalizing your plan for your academic future, so that counselors have a complete understanding of your academic goals.
“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,” Villa said in her letter.
Villa also said she thinks a mistake was not made in this case. I know she has counseling experience, so I respect her opinion.
I wouldn’t have been able to participate in a graduation at Citrus College from being seven credits short in my original student education plan, if I hadn’t received a second opinion after the University of La Verne accepted me in November 2019.
It is wonderful to have college counselors available to guide you through college, but having to visit them to see what classes are needed to graduate warrants a change. Students should be able to look up exactly what classes are left to take for their major after a certain number of semesters.
The counseling services from the EOP&S program at Citrus can be a helpful resource in dealing with this. The program has an in-depth session where the counselors help students in groups to sign up for classes while explaining which classes are needed for the specific major. It’s a process to help students learn how to determine the classes needed for themselves.
In my experience, the counseling office operates similarly in that the student education plan details all the classes needed for your major.
Counseling appointments are filled up quickly at the beginning of each semester. I think a program should be made for students to see on their own which classes they have left to take. I think this process would make everyone’s life easier, especially in the current state of remote delivery.
I thank Villa for offering her insight into how the counseling office operates. The counseling office continues to provide a necessary service to the Citrus College students.
