Joel Hainley : San Francisco Bay Area Software Consultant

After my entertaining visit with the Diablo Valley College counseling center last time, I made an appointment to talk to a regular counselor ( not a drop-in counselor ). On the appointed day, I arrive, check-in and wait and eventually I am called by a counselor back to her office.

Upon arriving in her office, she introduces herself, asks me to sit, and opens a folder with my transcript in it. We talk about that a bit, and then she asks what I wanted the counseling appointment for. I tell her what I was told in the last meeting, and that I need to get some old records cleaned up at LMC ( which is another community college within the same system ).

She looks a bit baffled and tells me that I’m at DVC and not LMC and that I would need to talk to them.

me : “i was told that this was a rather common thing and we would be able to get it worked out here, that i wouldn’t have to go to lmc to take any more classes”

counselor : “well I don’t know who told you that”

me : “the lady with the messy office, around the corner”

counselor : (raising her voice) “well, if she knew all the answers, why don’t you go get her to help you and leave me alone”

me : “now wait a minute, i’m just going on information that your organization gave me, you’re the professionals here, I’m just trying to get this figured out, i was told you could deal with this”

counselor : “i don’t know who you think you are…blah blah blah blah blah blah” ( she went on for a few minutes and attacked me personally at one point. I let her run out of steam, i just wanted to get this all figured out so I can get on with life, when she finally finished…

me : “are you done?”

counselor : “excuse me?”

me : “do you feel better?, can we continue?”

counselor : (her jaw hit the floor, and she tried to stare me down, it was rather cute, I met her gaze and she continued to sit there staring, so i leaned in a little, she turned bright red ) “do you want to get an appointment with a different counselor?”

me : “no, i want you to do your job, and help me figure this stuff out”

We went back to work and before i left she apologized for her completely unprofessional behaviour. I accepted the apology and left. She ended up being rather useless, but she did show me one particularly useful thing, the counselors at DVC rely heavily on a website ( she didn’t answer one question that she didn’t get off of the website ) that is available publicly, When I got home I was able to dig through it and get some answers that she couldn’t answer when i met with her.

Overall my experiences with the DVC counseling center have been comical, i’m going to try and get the information I need from somewhere else…perhaps talking to UC Berkeley counseling would be a better place to go to get the information that I need.