During the remainder of my time in the College Student Development and Counseling program, I intend to increase my exposure to advising work and continue to make professional connections. As a musician, I know that practice makes perfect, so my primary focus as a budding advisor right now is practice. Although I already take walk-in appointments independently, I will soon begin to take longer, scheduled advising appointments with students. I will also return to informational interviews with academic advisors in the area and will attend the NACADA Region 1 conference again this year. Last year’s conference sessions were enormously helpful, and this year I stand to gain even more as I look to immediately apply what I learn to my advising practice. Finally, I hope to further explore intersections between academic advising and closely related functional areas such as career advising.

As I work on my strengths and look to strengthen my connections, I plan to interview the Director of the Ross Center for Disability Services at University of Massachusetts Boston. When we took the Gallup StrengthsFinder as a class, I found that my #1 strength was inclusion. I tend to do a great job including others with my behavior and my conversation style. Yet I have become aware that some of my language concerning diverse identities can be outdated, specifically, those who have disabilities and Native American identities. This semester I am working to become current on those aspects of diversity so that I will not unintentionally exclude others. I am also working to hone my data skills, which relates to my strength of Input, to more closely align with the needs of advising offices. At my practicum, I will be assigned a data project to complete by May which will help me become familiar with data extraction and manipulation in the advising context.