1. Find out who your advisor is.  Know her name and where her office is.  Find out the best way to make appointments to see her.

2. Understand the two different kinds of advisors.  The first kind helps you wade through the rules and requirements of your institution and helps ensure that you’re taking the courses you need to complete your degree more or less on time.  This advisor is often also a good person to talk to about special programs and opportunities that may be available to you if you’re doing well and places to go for help if you’re having problems.  The second kind helps with career planning.  This advisor (who may be the same as the first one – imagine that!) should be an active member of the field you’re interested in and able to tell you about all the unwritten rules for getting into good graduate programs and being competitive for good jobs.  Both kinds are important!  

3. You will probably be required to meet with your academic advisor (the first kind) every semester.  Even if you’re not required to do so, you should probably do it anyway.  Observe good Office Hour Etiquette.  This will win you brownie points, often at a time of year when your advisor’s temper is being sorely tried by students who haven’t read this document.  Being on good terms with your academic advisor is a Very Good Thing.

4. Do your homework before you show up for your academic advising appointment.  Bring a catalog, a schedule of classes (if one is available), a current transcript that includes the courses you’re taking that semester, and a couple of plans for your coursework the following semester.  Also make a list of any questions you have about your requirements, academic progress, etc.  Your preparedness will make your advisor very happy.  A happy advisor is a good advisor!  (Having an unhappy advisor is a fate worse than death . . .)

5. Follow your advisor’s advice.  That’s why they get paid the big bucks (in our dreams!).  If you decide to follow your own advice (or your roommate’s, or your roommate’s cousin’s girlfriend’s classmate’s), it’s no use whining when you discover that after 3 years of coursework you’re still 3 years from graduating.

6. If you are doing all of the above Wonderful Things but feel that your advisor is not giving you appropriate, careful mentoring, it’s OK to at least think about changing advisors. If changing “official” advisors isn’t possible, you can probably find a faculty member whose interests match yours and who is willing to be a mentor even if she can’t sign official documents.

7. Other students – especially those who’ve been around a while – can be valuable sources of information on everything from who the really good professors are (note that definitions may vary . . .) to where to get the best pizza. Be careful who you trust, of course, and remember that tastes (in pizza as in professors) really do vary.