A student sits down with counselor Toawondia Underwood to discuss her plans for college. Students have been given the opportunity to have their senior meetings all throughout September. “Our whole like big picture of the counseling department is that we want to give you guys like academic advice, but we want to do like social and emotional support as well if you need that and then career and sort of postsecondary planning,” counseling department chair Heidi Nibbelink said. Photo by Christina Kurian.
By CHRISTINA KURIAN – Digital Copy Editor
Seniors are encouraged to make an appointment to have a senior meeting, in which students sit down and talk to their counselors concerning their future regarding graduation-readiness, college application preparation, college entrance exams and more.
As early application deadlines for colleges and universities approach, with the University of Georgia’s being on Oct. 15, seniors are encouraged to have their senior meetings.
“Seniors are supposed to be coming in and making appointments for their senior meeting, which is like a one-on-one at least hour long kind of sit down,” counseling department chair Heidi Nibbelink said. “(It’s a) personalized kind of section on how to take the next step, to see what you want to do, or if you don’t even know what you want to do, to help kind of narrow down your focus.”.
Though it is initially called senior meetings, counselors are welcomed to have students of all grade levels.
“We make sure that we do that with every single seniors on our huge list, but if underclassmen, 11th graders, 10th or even ninth graders, want to sit down… Four year plan to getting through high school or however many years they have left and start talking about those things, we’re totally happy to do that,” Nibbelink said.
Senior Andre Magyar expects to find the senior meetings beneficial.
“I mean even with as much as planning as a student can do, the counselors can still fill in the dark spots that you have not been able to find online, and you might be able to revise your plan a bit,” Magyar said.
Senior meetings are held in the counseling offices in the new administrative suite on North Campus, and students are encouraged to come more than once.
“Kids are welcomed to invite their parents to attend the meetings,” Nibbelink said. “Just because you have one senior meeting doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have a follow up or ever talk to your counselor again like usually we see kids multiple times.”
Nibbelink wants students to know counselors will be available to them, but especially during the month of September.
“We want to get them done like in advance. Some of the colleges have like early applications deadline,” Nibbelink said. “So, we want to make sure kids have all the information they need and their resources they need before that starts happening. So, September is really our month to get this done.”
