Agrivation Solved!

So I have finally figured out why certain classes that I wanted to take I could not. The Advisement department was kind enough to leave me a comment on one of my blogs and explain it to me. This is what they said:

Each year, a new catalog is introduced and students beginning in January of that year follow those program requirements. All courses listed on Blackboard are available for all students from all campuses unless they are reserved. Reserved courses are listed as such because they are held for a specific population of students. The GEC courses, which are General Education Core courses at the 100 level, are now in the new 2008 catalog. Unless students are beginning their program in 2008, these courses are unavailable to them.

I was very agitated that I couldn’t take certain classes because I’m getting close to graduation and I need certain credits fulfilled. Now that I totally understand why! I’m glad to see that Advisement is so on top of getting things explained to students.

As everyone knows making your schedule can be a frustrating, annoying, and aggravating process but now you can get advised without even waiting online! I was told that now there is help online! You can go to the Berkeley website, log on, and speak to a REAL person in the advisement department. You can ask them questions regarding classes, where their run, when their available, if their filled, reserved and so on. Because of the FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) which is a federal law and protects your privacy you cannot ask specific questions to your records. For example, they cannot answer questions such as when will I graduate, how many credits do I have left, or what kind of classes you should be taking.

This is great because many freshmen and students that are new to the school may not know how things work yet so this is a great, fast, simple way to get help without wasting much time. This is how you can log onto the live help:

You have to log onto Blackboard->Community->Advisement->"Click Here For Live Help" icon, (first announcement on the page) and chat with a Live Person Advisor. They are available to you from Monday through Thursday, 9am to 6pm and Fridays 9am to 5pm. Hope you find it helpful!