Ep. 110 - After New Student Orientation...What's Next? (First-Year Student Edition)

In this episode, Advisor Olga and Advisor Matt focus on tips for incoming first-year students for the fall 2025 semester. Key points include the importance of understanding the difference between high school and college, utilizing academic advising, adjusting class schedules, and the significance of campus resources. We also highlight the importance of self-care, checking campus email regularly, and preparing for campus employment. 

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Hey, and welcome back to the CSUSB advising podcast. This is Matt Markin, and hosting with me is...

Olga Valdivia  
Olga Valdivia, happy to be here. 

Matt Markin  
And we're changing up a little bit on this episode of the podcast. This is more geared for our incoming, first time freshmen that are starting in the fall 2025 semester for you, you have already attended your new student orientation, a two day orientation, and hopefully you enjoyed it. But we kind of wanted to recap all of that and give you our tips as you head into the fall semester. So Olga, we had parts during orientation. What do you remember seeing during orientation with our incoming students? 

Olga Valdivia  
I think more than anything, there's a lot of excitement. But also with that excitement comes some nerves, right about, about what to expect for the coming year. But, you know, I think of that as a great opportunity to really immerse yourself into your college education, and, you know, make the most of it. Yeah, absolutely. 

Matt Markin  
And we'll unpack a lot of that. You had a lot going on over those two days, a lot of individuals that you chatted with, that you got to meet. You got pack time with your orientation leaders and other students in your pack. So hopefully you remember a lot, made a lot of friends. But just to kind of recap a lot of it, you had various welcomes videos that you had to watch. Maybe your parent or family member also attended with you on day one, but you had an advising presentation from our office. A lot of information about graduation requirements. There was a resource fair, so a lot of different departments, clubs and organizations that hopefully not only got free stuff from at their tables, but actually learned a lot about what their departments do and how you can benefit from them as a resource. You got to meet some of the faculty within your academic college, maybe in the form of a panel where you got to ask questions. Or potentially, if you're in your science major, you might have had a actual presentation from your professor in your major. There was some time you spent in the computer lab, so with us in advising, where we helped you, kind of look at your class schedule, maybe show you how to switch around some classes. Showed you some of the advising tools, like your pause report, which is your degree audit, and your course major roadmap. Then you also have some presentations from campus safety and our Title Nine, equity and compliance office.

Matt Markin  
You had a lot of activities. You did with your orientation leaders, and you also got to meet some other individuals, such as your ASI president. Had some different reflection opportunities and workshops, and learned a little bit about financial aid and money management and what it is to be a coyote. So already, having said all that, I'm already exhausted

Olga Valdivia  
Absolutely and you know, the one thing I think about orientation is, it's two days. It's exciting. There's a lot of information packed. And of course, we don't expect that you're going to remember all of that information, right?

Olga Valdivia  
But hopefully you took the big tips from from the orientation so that, you know, we can make it a successful year. Yeah, absolutely. And we received a lot of kind of commonly asked questions for many of you throughout the various orientations that we attended. And Olga, I know one of we got was, well, what's the difference between high school and college? How would you help yodi answer that question? You know, I think that one of the biggest things they're going to notice is we don't have a set schedule the way they're used to having in high school, most students are in class between eight and 330 right? And so a lot of our brains are, are already geared to absorb with information during those hours. A lot of well, all students have been pre enrolled in courses and and so schedules may be all over the place. I think that's one of the first things to pay attention to, because, like I said, we're wired a certain way, and now, now we're switching it up, but I think students need to pay attention to like when they learn best. Are they a morning person, or do they like learning later in the day? These are, these are things that are going to help you be successful, right? Because if you're taking a night class, well that's not going to serve you. 

Olga Valdivia  
Well, if that's not what you're used to a big change is going to be maybe the workload right? Maybe in high school last year might have gotten a little easier or more difficult because of maybe AP classes, things like that. Now, at a at a four year university, you know, on average, students are adding about five classes a.

Olga Valdivia  
Term right, at least 12 or more units. And some classes may be in person, whereas others may be online. So it's going to be a mix of classes and and kind of bringing it back to to make sure that you're dedicated, that you're reserving time for not just studying, but also, if you have activities that you're going to be a part of, well, you know, you're, you know, you're going to clubs. Are you joining a sorority, that sort of thing. So there's going to be other aspects to college life.

Matt Markin  
 Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you were kind of mentioning with like high school, yeah, it's very much. Was very structured. You know, you had periods one through six, or maybe even had zero period or seventh period, but you got up, you had your routine, you went to school, had your various classes. It's kind of basically the same schedule, Monday through Friday. And as you're mentioning, yeah, we pack and roll with the students in the classes. They might have a class that's twice a week up, Monday, Wednesdays, at nine o'clock. They might have a class that's Tuesday, Thursdays in the afternoon, at one o'clock, they might have the online classes. They might have that mixture of some online and in person classes. So very different type of structure going on with classes in college versus high school, but kind of like what you're saying, they may have a lot of open times. So that leads to what we call student responsibility. There's a lot more flexibility with college, but also a lot more demand on students in terms of their studying after class or before they have their next class. Because something I think students will notice from the beginning when they attend colleges. There's no bells to tell students when class starts, when class ends. There's professors are not going to maybe have a lot of homework for students, not a lot of extra credit for students, so their grade might only be based off just some tests or exams and maybe an assignment here and there so drastically different than than in high school. 

Olga Valdivia  
So another thing that comes to mind for me is a lot of new changes for all of you freshmen, right? Maybe some of you are learning to drive, right? Maybe you're going to be commuting to campus by bus. These are all going to be new, new things to get accustomed to and and kind of add into your new daily routine, whatever that may be. So it's going to also be important to consider how much additional time do I need to prepare to get myself to school?

Matt Markin  
Yeah? So definitely, kind of factoring, yeah, that amount of time that maybe I need to get up and get ready, but if I need to travel to campus for my classes, maybe there's some traffic the park when I get here. How much time that's going to take? So, yeah, great advice there. Now you were mentioning a little bit about AP. You mentioned AP classes. That's also a question you get is about AP and IB exam scores. What would you want new students to know about that? 

Olga Valdivia  
Okay, so if you guys took AP courses and took the exam, usually we're getting scores around July. It's important that if you are enrolled in a course that maybe you've already taken as an AP, that you're meeting with us advisors so that we can help you adjust your schedule if you need the support. But really we don't want students having to repeat a course they've already completed. So maybe thinking about switching the class. Or we have until August, right until to be able to make changes to our schedule. So I'd say if you don't have the perfect schedule, that's okay, right? We can adjust your schedule as we get closer, or until we have those official scores in hand.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, and I think that also connected to that would be Community College, transcripts as well, is making sure you get your AP and IB scores sent to us, but also any coursework that you did at the community college, because even if the community college classes show up on your high school transcript, we can't take it off of there to give you credit on your paws report, and we won't know what requirements you may already have completed based off that college work or your AP and IB score, so please make sure you send those to us, but also kind of connected to what you're saying about changing up the class schedule, because if we pack enrolled a student into some classes and then we get their college transcript, or we then get their AP or IB scores. It may they may already get credit for something that we've already put pack and roll them into a course for. So we definitely want to be able to change up those classes as well. But I think this also leads into kind of connected to that is like, Well, what do we. Do as advisors in the academic advising office. You know, I know sometimes students might think kind of compares to maybe their high school counselor equivalent. How would you define like, what what we do, how we can help students?

Olga Valdivia  
Well, I think that every advisor has their own style, right? But more than anything, we're here as a support for students, to help them understand how to read their paws report, understand the campus policies, assist them in switching swapping courses. Not only do we help with that, but we also like to provide different resources based off the students individual needs. And a lot of the time we're connecting students with other campus partners.

Matt Markin  
So, in a sense, we're kind of like a guide to students, which I think for for new students to know is like you have an assigned advisor, academic advisor within our academic advising office, or if you don't, it's you're assigned to our office in general. So you have an office, you have someone that you can connect with and ask questions to. If you log into your MyCoyote account and go to your student profile, there'll be a part on there that shows our office, your assigned advisor, their email address. So you have someone. If you have a question, you're not sure where to go, who to ask, ask your assigned advisor. If we don't have the direct answer, a lot of times, at least, know who to direct you to or what department to direct you to. So never feel like you're going at it alone. You have Olga, you have myself, you have our various colleagues in our office that are here to help you throughout your whole time at CSUSB.

Olga Valdivia  
And also, if you forget, if you don't have a scheduled appointment, you can always do a drop in with our peers.

Matt Markin  
And then those drop in hours might change depending if we're in the summer or our regular hours, but you can always check our csusb.edu/advising. That's our website, and we'll have our drop in information there, but we offer drop ins both in person and virtually, so no appointment required for that, but you can definitely get some some of those quick questions answered for you during our drop ins. 

Olga Valdivia  
All right, so just to circle back in terms of editing your class schedule, because I did mention some schedules may be all over the place, and you might want a two day schedule, or you know you're okay having classes five days a week, whatever that looks like for you. You have the opportunity to edit your schedule. You can swap classes. If you're not feeling very confident in terms of what to switch into. Of course, we're here to help. But yes, you can adjust your schedules. And one question that has came from that is, what is USTD 1000. So, USTD 1000 is a course that's taught, and this year, all freshmen are enrolled in this ustd course. It's something that I'm really excited about, because we as advisors get to teach this course, right? And in this course, not only are students learning about how to navigate their new college life, right, we provide a lot of different resources through the class study habits. We're talking about things that are happening in our environment at the time, and it's just a lot of fun and a good place to make new friends, right? Because a lot of the activities are going to be group activities, and understanding the different resources on campus and having that buddy system. So I'm looking forward to it and to see who all is in my class, right? But I hope that all students are looking at this class as an additional support, which it is. Not only are you getting that extra unit of enrollment and that counts towards your 120 units towards graduation, but it's going to be a lot of fun, so I'm looking forward to that.

Matt Markin  
And I know you get to teach even you've taught it last year and how much you've enjoyed it. And I know students that are gonna be in your class, and students in any of the other of our colleagues sections of USTD 1000A, I know they're really looking forward to teaching this class as well. So you know, Yoties, you get to build community with being a first year student, and, you know, learn those success tips of being a college student and navigating being at CSUSB. And then, just as a reminder, too, in terms of deadlines, depending when you're listening to this podcast episode, just make sure you get all your transcripts in, especially your high school transcripts, by the July deadline. If you're listening to this after. Words, hopefully you already got your transcripts in. But I think this could also be something too that we can segue into. We've talked about class schedules. Students have attended orientation. One thing you'll receive or have access to in the beginning of August is something called coyote experience. It's going to be a Canvas course, which I'll have access to through your mycoy account. And if you listen to this prior to August, it should be available by August 4. It'll show up as a Canvas course, and it'll have various modules from you know what to expect and how to thrive in your first year. What is academic success. What is academic advising, although we kind of talked about it already on here, various campus resources and finding that community within your first year. So you might hear like, oh, wasn't this similar, in a way, to USTD 1000A a a lot of it overlaps, because we want to make sure that you know this information. You have individuals that you can build fantastic professional relationships with. So a lot of things that you'll have access to as a CSUSB student, but Olga, I kind of wanted to pick your brain a little bit in terms of like, well, you know, we have students that just attended their new student orientation. You know, classes for the fall semester don't start to the latter part of August. Some might be asking like, Well, is there anything I should be doing in the meantime, before fall starts? I feel like you know, the rest of summer, should I just enjoy it? Any tips that you have?

Olga Valdivia  
Absolutely, of course, enjoy your summer, right? We're gearing up to start your your college experience, so I would hope that that students are taking care of themselves, right? Self care is very important. But also thinking about your class schedule, double checking your class schedule, making sure everything's still on track. Everything looks good. But another wonderful thing to do is, where are my classes? And I know y'all have already attended orientation and done some type of tour, but there's a lot of information in those two days, so you as a student, you can always come to campus, give yourself a little personal tour, go through the admissions, admissions and tours, or even pull up a digital map of our campus, which all students have access to on their phones. We have an app for it, and thinking about actually starting in August, we all need parking passes. That's something that you can take care of early through the Parking Services office. Yeah, so there's a couple of tips, maybe another one, because I did have a lot of students ask about campus employment. Maybe start getting together your handshake account and maybe putting together your resume so you can start applying for jobs, because, as we know, we can't do our work without the support of students.

Matt Markin  
And actually great tips. And that actually got me thinking about, what else could we have students do? And that might be getting the habit of checking your campus email, your student email. You're gonna receive a lot of emails from various events going on on campus, other departments, academic advising, your assigned academic advisor, so not that you necessarily have to check it every single day. If you do awesome, we suggest that, but at least once or twice a week, that way you can kind of clean up your email inbox, delete emails that may not pertain to you. And then that way you can also see, oh, I forgot about this. There's something from financial aid. There's something from my advisor. Trust us, this is your campus email. Is kind of like your main form of formal communication with the university, with CSUSB. So even a lot of your professors in classes will send emails out to your to your student email. So you want to make sure you don't miss out on any of that.

Olga Valdivia  
Another question that comes to mind is, what if? What if I'm not totally sure on my major, right? So for those students that are in between majors, we're here to help support you. We also have the career center that can give you more information about possible careers associated with specific majors, but this is a good time to consider what it is that you want to do, and if you're not 100% percent sure, that's okay too. I know, personally, I changed my major a couple of times, and so it's totally normal if you feel like you're on the fence with your specific major.

Matt Markin  
I went from when I was a student here, I went from being a math major to a psychology major. So definitely I, I was one of those students. But that's kind of where you you're in college. You're going to explore, you know, your different interests. So don't feel like you know I'm. Our new one major. I must finish in this major. If you end up changing your mind, that's fine. You might take a class that sparks an interest. You might run into go to an event, or run into someone that informs you about some other major we have here, some other course that sparks an interest. So explore those options. And just like you're saying, Olga, we got the career center as well that that you can work with, and they have various assessments that you can do. So yeah, don't feel like you're going it alone. Lot of different resources here on campus, but maybe we'll talk about some of the upcoming dates that you should be aware of. So yeah, maybe summer. But hey, fall classes are going to be starting in the latter part of August, if you get financial aid, typically, financial aid is dispersed a couple of weeks before classes start Saturday. Classes for fall are going to start on Saturday, August 23 and then classes for the regular weekday, classes are going to start on Monday, August 25 now, from here through the first week of classes, you're still able to change up your schedule through your MyCoyote account. Of course, make sure you meet with your advisor if you want to change classes, as well as if you're looking to change your major. But Friday, August 29 is the last day that you can add a class through your mycoyoty account, if that class is open. And of course, too, again, with a lot of stuff that we've just talked about, regarding deadlines, what you should know, what you did during orientation, how to be successful, who to go to for questions. Again, you have us in academic advising, so any questions that come up, please let us know. That's what we're here for. If you don't see us, then we're just waiting. So please chat with us. We want to get to know you. Olga, any any last words before we end this podcast episode.

Olga Valdivia  
We are so excited to welcome all students. So yes, please connect with us. We're here to support you and keep cheering you on. So I hope that you are enjoying your summer before officially starting your your term.