Professors Are Here To Help: How Office Hours Offer More Benefits Than You Realize

By Francine Fluetsch on January 20, 2014

image via www.bristol.k12.ct.us

We all know that our professors and T.A.’s hold office hours, but how many of us actually go to them if they aren’t required? I know how it is, you get back from class and have so many other things to do that office hours just seem like they’ll take up your precious time.

But the thing is that office hours can be really beneficial to you, and not just if you need help with the class. They are a way for you to get to know your professor better, and for them to know you as a person, and not just as another nameless face in a 400-person class.

Sarah Guinon, a first year linguistics student at UC Santa Cruz, gave me her opinion on the importance of going to office hours.

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“I think it is important to go to office hours because once you meet your professor face to face, you start to see that same face glaring at you when you miss a class and show up the next time, when you’re doing your homework and want to slack off, or copy the answers and go watch Dexter.”

“Even though that teacher will most likely not glare at you, giving yourself that pressure helps you stay motivated when you think someone important is depending on you,” Guinon said.

I definitely agree that once you know your professor, you want to make sure that you keep up a good impression. This will benefit you in the long run, because professors are full of resources and connections that could help you with getting into a good grad school or scoring that internship or job that you really want.

Professor Walter Campbell, a German professor at UC Santa Cruz, gave some very useful information about the benefits of going to office hours.

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“Going to office hours is a way to make yourself identified, especially in a big class. Having a personal interaction outside of class with your professor will give you a background, which will be helpful if you would like to ask your professor for a letter of recommendation,” Campbell said.

After conducting that interview, I realized that I needed to utilize office hours more, because I was really missing out. It definitely can get awkward if you go up to a teacher asking for a letter of recommendation and they don’t even know who you are.

Office hours will give you an opportunity to show your professor that the class is important to you, and will in turn open up opportunities to you that may not have been possible without the help of your professor. They have a lot of connections, especially for jobs and internships that they would be able to set you up with. Want more ways to stand out to your professor? Here is an article from RA Magazine that gives you 10 ways to get yourself noticed.

Tiffany Vanichy, a second year biology student at UC Santa Cruz, said that “students should definitely go to office hours, even if they are afraid that it might be a little awkward to talk to a professor that they don’t really know.”

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Awkward situations are never fun, but Professor Campbell provided me with some advice on what to bring to office hours so you will get the most time out of them and hopefully forgo the awkwardness.

Campbell said “when a student comes to office hours, they should come with specific questions or at least a goal of what they want to get accomplished in the amount of time given.”

Doing a bit of pre-work on your part will definitely help you get the most out of your office hour experience. If you feel like you are totally lost in the class, try and bring in some examples of things that you are really struggling with, so you aren’t wasting your office hour time searching for problems to go over. If I’m doing a homework assignment that is really confusing to me, I jot down little notes to myself that I will ask in class or ask the professor in office hours.

If you don’t have a question, but simply want to go to office hours to show the professor that you care about the class, just drop in to say hi. They won’t bite. Your “goal,” as Campbell mentioned, can really be as simple as introducing yourself.

Professor Gabriela Muller, an art history teacher at Mira Costa College, listed off some interesting points about why she likes when students go to her office hours.

“From my perspective as an instructor, students who come to office hours demonstrate that they care and are interested in the course, and it is a great way for us to break the ice and get to know each other,” she said.

“Usually the question(s) that such students ask are about things other students are wondering about too and so I can bring up these questions in class and everybody benefits.”

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Professors are there to help, and we should all take advantage of the time that they set aside for us. Don’t ever feel like you are bothering them, because they actually want us to go.

Muller said she had a hard time getting students to take advantage of her office hours, which I’m sure is a problem shared by most teachers. Why do you think some of them require you to go as part of your grade? They want to show you just how helpful going for a short visit can be. This article by Emily Schiller on Back to College provides even more reasons why you should take advantage of office hours.

Angie Bonilla, a PhD student in literature and a T.A. at UC Santa Cruz, provided me with a T.A.’s perspective on why office hours are important.

“Office hours are a special opportunity for instructors to give students in-depth feedback on their performance in writing, et cetera,” she said.

In big classes, you sometimes don’t really get a sense of where your grade is in the class until they are posted at the very end. Going to office hours means you can gage how you are doing, and ask for advice on how to improve.

Bonilla also mentioned that office hours “allow TAs to understand where the student stands in terms of his or her familiarity with the methods and material introduced in the course.”

If you are struggling with something, a T.A. might just be able to help you pin-point the problem and supply a different way of looking at it to help you better understand. Just because they aren’t the professor doesn’t mean that they don’t know the material.

image via www.rockvalleycollege.edu

You want to get on your T.A.’s good side, especially when it is a large class and they are the ones who will be grading your papers. They are another very useful tool to use, and you should attend both your T.A. and your professor’s office hours, so you can get to know both of them. Here is an article by Danielle Rosvally, which stresses that the role of the T.A. is to help students; they are a helpful resource that is closer in age to undergrads and therefore are more relatable and less intimidating than a professor might be.

So, long story short, attend those office hours! You just might learn something.

 

 

 

 

 

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