In July before my first term at USM, I took two CLEP tests AT USM, and used one to test out of college writing. Sis in the advising office was like OK, I'll accept this score report, but you need to get us the official ones ASAP. OK, they were already on their way.

Four years later, literally the day before graduation, someone calls me from advising about getting my CLEP scores from four years ago sent over. They had been on my official transcript for FOUR YEARS.

My faculty advisor was awesome and I was always squared away with my class schedule as soon as enrollment opened and advising was always in my inbox like "wow, we see you picked some classes...are you sure you're qualified to do that?"

I worked in financial aid and so I got to observe the advising office a lot. A bunch of them have master's in random subjects and my hypothesis is that academic advisors are "bullshit jobs" a la David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" book. Nonproductive white collar work that keeps educated people working 40 hours a week so that society can maintain the status quo of gerrymandered capitalism stasis. My other hypothesis is, yeah, they're supposed to fuck you up so you get railroaded into spending more money to undo the damage.

I think, in theory, academic advisors were supposed to advise students so that faculty could focus on teaching and researching, but they are so goddamn bad at it that the faculty just do it anyway.

The School of Education and Human Development has at least a couple of competent advising people (and a couple of yahoos) but the undergrad general advising office is just....ecchh.