Baccalaureate Versus Bachelorette

I am an academic advisor at a university. My job is to assist students in identifying a major, reviewing degree requirements, and offering suggestions on what courses to take. I also offer advice on financial aid, scholarships, study abroad, internships, practicums, medical/law/dental school, and work with faculty on advising issues, etc, etc, etc. The job description may read simple enough and anyone who’s been to college may recall having met with their academic advisor at some point or another.

When I tell people I’m an academic advisor I’m typically met with a cringe, followed by the regaling story of how their advisor “did them wrong”. Now I’m not going to claim that an academic advisor never gave bad advice or mistakenly told a student the wrong information. It happens. We are human and in our defense we see a lot of students. I alone have over a thousand (yeah you try keeping them all straight and see how good you do!) Sometimes though, it’s not the advisor that does the student wrong. Sometimes the student is or does the wrong all by themselves.

One such case involves the nigh unfathomable number of times I have had to explain to a young lady that she is in college to earn her baccalaureate degree not her bachelorette. Now, you may laugh as I admittedly did the first time a young woman said this to me. In fact, I almost spit my coffee all over my keyboard. The young woman asked me if I was, “Ok”, to which I quickly said, “Great. So you want to earn your baccalaureate degree” and quickly moved on with the conversation hoping that the young lady would not make the same faux pas in the future.

As time passed however, I routinely began to hear students of the female persuasion calling their degree a bachelorette and I began to wonder if this was some type of deliberate euphemism for a women with a degree and by default a brain. I mean after all, I have two degrees and am still single so I could argue that I in fact have earned by bachelorette status as a result of attending college. I mean society is rife with clichés about how men don’t fancy smart women or how smart, confident women intimidate men. I have always dismissed those comments and the men who have called me intimidating as mere troglodytes who want to drag me back to stupid and the cave kitchen. But alas, with this new upsurge in “Bachelorette Degree” verbiage I may have been wrong.

Perhaps not though.

I decided to put my theory to the test and began asking the women, who referred to wanting to earn a baccalaureate degree as a bachelorette, if they knew they were using the wrong word. Often the young lady would appear uncomfortable and would say, “You mean it’s not a bachelorette?” I would then have to explain the difference in the meaning of these two words, which admittedly made me question the quality of English education our students are receiving in high school. I mean can you imagine having to explain to a college student that “A baccalaureate is a degree issued after four to five years of study in a specific discipline and demonstrates the student’s increased ability to reason, research, and form and communicate ideas and opinions whereas a bachelorette is a single woman most likely seen on ABC’s “The Bachelor or Bachelorette”, “Temptation Island” or my personal reality TV favorite ‘The Flavor of Love.’”

In most cases the young lady realizes her mistake and says, “Wow, that sounded real dumb didn’t it?” To which I yearn to reply, “Well, frankly, YES!” But I never do. I always say, “Easy mistake and great joke,” in the hopes that they would confirm my theory that the bachelorette degree is the new euphemism for a smart, unmarried woman. But they never get the joke. I end up having to explain the joke or I just say, “Never mind,” and continue with the advising appointment.

In rare cases I have to offer a more in-depth explanation of the differences. This explanation usually goes like this:

Me: Are you single or do you have a boyfriend, husband, etc?

Student: I’m single.

Me: So if you’re single, then you are bachelorette. That is why the bride is given a bachelorette party. It’s her last night of being an unmarried woman.

Student: Oh! So wait, how’s that different?

Me: Well are you in college to earn a degree in being single forever or are you here to earn a degree in say biology or chemistry?

Student: Well I’m pre-med.

Me: Whatever. The point is, are you getting a degree in being a single girl or are you getting a degree in pre-med?

Student: Pre-med.

Me: So if you want a degree in pre-med it’s called a B-A-C-C-A-L-A-U-R-E-A-T-E not a bachelorette.

Student: Uh-huh, yeah so do I need to take Anatomy or…?

This is typically the point where I really want to have Homer Simpson fed audio in my office so that I can make the “D'OH” sound at the click of a button. Other times I simply scribble the students name into my notebook of people who will never be my doctor. And still other times I simply wish for students to really hear what they are saying and to take responsibility for themselves and their own academic career instead of blaming us poor advisors all the time. But sometimes wishes are like bachelorettes – always the bridesmaid never the degree.