The English Department offers students many opportunities for advising. The DUS and ADUS are happy to meet with students at any time to answer questions about the department, the major, or a student’s individual academic plans. In addition to the DUS and ADUS, faculty representatives affiliated with each college—or, indeed, any member of the faculty—can be good resources. We hope that students will develop advising relationships with faculty members who share their interests, and who can counsel them over time about their course of study.
Advising means reviewing and discussing your academic program in some detail on a regular basis (that is, once or twice a term) with someone who knows you as a student, and who perhaps even shares your specific academic interests. Such discussions may include matters of all sorts, from concerns about how particular courses might best work together, to projections about a possible double major, to the benefits of applying to the writing concentration, to plans for study abroad, or even talks about your plans for life after Yale. Your advisor may also be someone with whom you wish to share certain successes and frustrations—someone, in short, in whose office you are always welcome. Advising is not something to seek out only during registration period.