Blog 20: Exit Interview

Content:

1.) My essential question is, "How best can an academic counselor help the university students obtain a positive college experience?"
Answer 1, "An academic counselor can provide the university students a career assessment so they find a suitable major to pursue."
Answer 2, "An academic counselor can ensure the students join a high school outreach program during their senior year of high school."
Answer 3, "An academic counselor must take student background into account and advise accordingly."
My best answer is my third answer because I found out that taking someone's background into account is important when it comes to offering help. With knowing that, it's also essential that you don't make assumptions on what they need. Just because they are of certain race, you can't just assume that they need more or less help that then rest.

2.) I came across this answer by accident. I had previously obtained a different answer but I started reading a book on multicultural students and how minority students experience college and reading on that, and with the help of my teacher, I was able to change my answer and make it more efficient. With that, I was able to obtain more sources to do more research on that aspect of my topic.

3.) The one major problem that I encountered was having my first mentor, Evelyn Luna be so far from my area. She works at UC Riverside as an academic counselor and seeing her was becoming complicated. I hardly ever had the chance to see her and we both talked it through and realized that it would be better if I had a mentor closer to me. This is when I came across my second mentor, Elmer Rodriguez. He is a high school outreach specialist at Mt. San Antonio College. He has helped me out so much when it comes to finding resources and finding the answers to my essential question. In fact, Elmer and Evelyn know each other from previous years which amazed me and made me realize that this really is a small world. Aside from that, Elmer and Evelyn have been such a huge help and such great resources. I couldn't thank them both enough.

4.) Through the course of the year, I have found most of my published sources to be helpful. The two most significant sources would be, "How Minority Students Experience College" by Lemuel W. Watson, Melvin C. Terrell, Doris J. Wright and Associates. The other source is a book called, "Transforming the Multiculturalism Education of Teachers" by Michael Vavrus. Both of these books have helped me with my research behind my third answer since, specially since it involved multiculturalism. As I began reading through these books, it made me open my eyes and realize that culture isn't something only involving self-pride, but also involving the entire school and college communities. Multiculturalism is something that must always be present.