You Gotta Believe!

This title has two meanings

1) "You gotta believe" is a phrase that Mets fans have used for a long while now. With spring training upon us I thought it was fitting. I love it because it is very vague. You gotta believe what? This year I will take it as "you gotta believe they'll do better than last year."

2) You gotta believe that changing my major will work. A lot of obstacles have presented themselves, trying to ruin my effort to switch to advertising. I knew it wasn't going to be an easy task to change my major with one year left and without taking any required advertising courses, but I have never been more determined. This was a long process so bear with me. First, I contacted the communications advisor via email and she responded with an academic plan that would set my graduation date back to the spring of 07. Not happening. From there, I decided to contact The main advertising professor, Rich Lei and asked to meet with him and work something out. With great effort, he told me that my plan to take certain classes concurrently would not work because some were prerequisites for the other. He did give me a scenario where it may work and it involved taking ADV 207 (the introductory advertising course) over the summer. After leaving his office, I researched everywhere for a summer course that would transfer as ADV 207. After searching through all Maricopa community colleges, NAU, Las Vegas community colleges and UNLV, none were offering a comparable course. Now, rewind to my senior year in high school. I received Glendale Community College credit for my Greenway marketing class. It transferred to NAU as MKT 271. I contacted the Professor Lei to ask if that could count for ADV 207 but he told me that it would not because marketing classes don't cover essential advertising material. Today I just about gave up hope. With one final desperate move, I asked if I could somehow do an independent study and takes the tests to receive ADV 207 credit or if I could petition to add ADV 207 this year even though it is almost halfway over. In response to that last email he responded:

I looked up the gcc web site and found the course description for mkt
271 (which you took and got an "a")..based on this, i will accept it
as a substitution for adv 207 (intro to advertising)...i hope this
helps you in your scheduling.

Hallelujah right?? Not so fast. I have one more hoop to jump through. I have to ask a different professor if I can take two classes concurrently that should be taken in sequence. Although this is something that the main advertising said could be possible, it is ultimately up to Professor Paul Helford. Coincidentally, I dropped professor Helford's COM 101 class a couple semesters ago. Let's hope he forgets. So, I have emailed professor Helford with the situation and wait nervously for an answer. If it works all is set and my next three semesters look like this: Summer = 9 credits, Fall = 15 credits and Spring = 15 credits. Not too shabby.

Although I have left Rachel out of the process, she played a huge role. She supported me, gave me the names of the condtacts I needed and figured out all the different possibilities that made this never ending process possible. Thanks Rachel!!

The only downfall to this is if somehow this doesn't happen, I am going to have a tremendous breakdown. Be prepared.

-SAG