Graduation from College, and College Guidance Councilors

You can graduate High School by merely attending classes until you make it thru 12th grade.  College is trickier.  You have to have enough course credits to get your degree.  Just attending classes for four years isn't enough.  You have to have all the required credits in the required courses.  Missing just a single credit in physical education can deny you a diploma.  And tie you up for another year, and another year of tuition payments.  Nobody wants this.
   The number and type of credits you need depend upon your major.  At my Alma Mater, engineering majors required about 15% more credits than education majors or liberal arts majors.  And each major required different course credits for graduation.  So, you need to pick your major early on, like freshman year.  Early in freshman year.  Before Christmas for sure.
   To pick your major, you have to have some idea of what your want to do with your life after you make it thru college.  You need a major that makes you employable in your chosen field.  Don't have a chosen field?  Do some serious thinking, talk to your parents, friends, relatives, get some advice, cause this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make in your life.   Colleges offer a fair number of interesting sounding majors that are totally worthless when you go job hunting.  Avoid them.  Gender studies, ethnic studies, anything studies, art history, sociology, anthropology, and some others won't get you a job anywhere.
   Then, get the college catalog, and make a list of all the courses you need to take for your chosen major.  The senior level courses will all require you take some lower level courses, prerequisites they are called.  Make a spreadsheet, enter all the courses, in the order you have to take them.  Add up all the credits and see if it is enough.  Check for booby traps, like courses that are only offered one semester.  Miss getting into that class when it is offered, and you can loose a whole year.  Neaten up the spreadsheet and print it out. 
   Now you are ready to meet your college guidance councilor.  He will be a junior faculty member, who has about a hundred other students assigned to him, and courses to teach, research to do, and papers to grade.  He cannot afford you much time.  He views the job of his department as training new professors to teach in his department.  When discussing majors, he will probably push you toward majoring in his department.  Listen politely, but you don't have to take his advice.  Show him your spreadsheet and  ask him if it looks correct.  If he offers suggestions or criticism, take notes.  Check your notes against the college catalog.  Make sure you have the current version of the catalog.
   One further thing you have to do, namely get into the courses you need.  Popular courses are mobbed and not everyone gets in.  The college has a day when course registration opens for each semester.  Know that day.  Get down to registration first thing on the first day and you improve your chances of getting into the courses you need.