Vicks Advising Center: A Hidden Gem
Writer Aalia Qazi Designer Emma Bittner
Stressed about what you’re doing with your life? Need tips on how to navigate academic life at UT? The Vicks Center for Strategic Advising and Career Counseling (Vick) is here to help. Located in JES A115, you can get help on the weekdays by meeting with advisors for different purposes. The center offers in-person and online appointments for students who are exploring majors, careers and are undecided on what path they want to take. Not only can you meet with advisors one on one, but you can attend workshops that can help you plan your future as well. For example, they hold events to help with graduate school planning, internships, and resumes. For more information, you can visit their easy to access website: https://ugs.utexas. edu/vick. The four main areas of expertise for Vick are major exploration, registration, academic planning, and academic difficulty/scholastic probation. Registration is a rough time for everyone because no one really knows what classes they want to take. While all colleges have advising centers, the appointments seem quick and unbeneficial sometimes because some questions are left hanging after the twenty to thirty-minute time slots allotted to students. There are over 50,000 students on campus, and the advisors allocated to each student has a poor ratio that can sometimes be hard to manage. Vick helps students with bars, dropping classes, making a class pass/fail, taking courses outside of UT, and picking courses. Moreover, Vick helps find methods to get involved in research, internal transfers, volunteering, and studying abroad, which is an opportunity many students want to embark upon but are unable to find the right program that enables them to do so. Personally, visiting the Vick center helped me plan what career path I want to follow. While the resources available to students are wonderful, such as the flyers and handouts located in the entrance that give guidelines for cover letters, resumes, essays, etc., meeting with an advisor would be more beneficial for students because they can receive advice unique to their circumstance. I met with an academic advisor to talk about when I should start thinking about adding a minor and what the process of that would look like. I also met with a career counselor to help me plan out intern-
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