Advisors & Mentors
You might be wondering what is next after you have matriculated into Tufts – do you dive head first into classes?
While you could certainly attempt…
“I want weekly update emails,” Susan told me before we hung up the phone. This is how our phone conversations often end, after I’ve spilled out all my life and career ideas in one giant word vomit and we brainstorm how to make them into reality. I still call Susan three years after graduation, and I imagine that when I’m 30 and 40 our conversations will end the same – with the demand for weekly update emails.
As an admissions officer, I talk a lot about endless options at Tufts. When I arrived on campus, suddenly everything was open to me, whether I was already an expert or just trying something for the first time. For the most part, this is what made my experience great. These options allowed me to try new things, failing at some and exceeding at others. They allowed me to make new friends and find skills I never knew I had. But in other ways, all this opportunity made it very easy to feel lost, especially for someone who gets stressed out by choosing a treadmill at the gym. What will I do when I graduate? How will I pass this class? Should I be seeking out an internship? Big life questions became much more imminent when I started college, and I quickly realized I needed help. I needed an office to run to when those endless options I rave about started to become overwhelming.
Enter Susan Eisenhauer, then-Associate Director of the Communications and Media Studies (CMS) program, and my guardian angel (have I become too dramatic?)
“Susan, I have no idea what classes I want to take. There are too many options. If I can’t even decide on a class schedule, how am I ever going to function in the real world? I won’t! I will literally be jobless and living with my parents and eating Ramen noodles for the rest of my life, watching escapist reality television and sleeping ‘til noon.” I’m not going to pretend that I am so secure in my abilities that this freak-out never happened. And I don’t want to scare you, but I’ll bet that you, too, will have some similar, though probably less melodramatic, moment during your time in college. But if you’re lucky enough to have a mentor like Susan (which, at Tufts, you will), rest assured that all problems will be resolved. After my horrendously shortsighted meltdown, Susan smiled, and reminded me that (a) I hate Ramen noodles and if I’ll be living off of anything it will probably be Annie’s mac and cheese, and (b) I may not know what my whole schedule should look like, but I do know how to find classes I think are interesting, and that’s half the battle. “Do you like biology?” Susan asked. “No!” I responded as though she’d offered me Brussels sprouts covered in gasoline... or covered in anything really; they are Brussels sprouts, after all. “Then why are you looking at the course listings in the bio department?” she responded. “You liked your sociology class last semester, you should look at other social sciences…” and I was on my way. From there, Susan helped me through a sports marketing internship with the Kraft Sports Group, a “winternship” with a talent manager in L.A., a CMS minor and a full senior design project. I found out what I loved, and what I didn’t love, because of her poking and prodding and nudging (and other things meaning gentle, encouraging shoves).
It seems like such a simple thing, but it took me a while to realize that no one is expected to get through college alone; that’s not the point. That is, in fact, what colleges are for – guidance, support systems, study buddies. And at Tufts, no one is expected to get through college with just the help of their academic adviser, either. There’s a whole network of people here to help you, and if you seek them out, you’ll find these “facademic advisers” (that’s my new phrase, it means faux academic advisers, do you like it?) in every nook, cranny, and coffee shop (of which there are many) of this over caffeinated campus.
Technically, no, Susan Eisenhauer wasn’t my academic adviser. But that didn’t stop her from completely changing my outlook on education, from giving me hands-on experiences I wouldn’t have found otherwise, or from being my cheerleader. As I see the Tufts class of 2018 finally taking shape, I’ve been wondering to myself who your advisers will be, officially or unofficially. As I thought about Susan, I realized that each of you will find many. And this is good, because stopping at one would be a shame when you’re on a campus with as many bright minds as this one.
P.S. That whole thing about Ramen noodles was all for the sake of the story – I of course love Ramen noodles since, you know, I am human.
You might be wondering what is next after you have matriculated into Tufts – do you dive head first into classes?
While you could certainly attempt…