Wondering why you can’t pull an A if you never speak to your professors is kind of like wondering why you lost a game of poker when you had a flush. You just aren’t playing your cards right.
We can all recognize why it is valuable to discuss material that you are trying to learn and your professor is trying to teach, but many of us still avoid office hours. The question is, are we just lazy, or are we savvy assessors of energy expenditure?
Office hours can be inaccessible, ineffective and intimidating.
But their utility is worth more than their potential futility, and so they should be made more accessible by professors and more sought after by students.
In an increasingly impersonal university environment, building rapport with professors is beneficial. The budget crisis has ballooned classroom sizes, decreased the number of teaching assistants that professors can hire and has played a role in making professors less available because they may be on campus fewer days a week because they no longer teach a certain course.
Taking advantage of electronic communication is wise. Many professors create online forums for students to pose questions.
Though I have been lauding personal interaction, online forums are incredibly useful. Everyone can view one other’s questions, students have to prepare their ideas before delving into a discussion, and professors can respond at virtually any time.
Most professors offer office hours one to two hours a week, and the likelihood that those hours are compatible with everyone’s schedules is slim. There are undemanding methods to find optimal hours for both professor and student. Teaching assistants could poll classes for availability and enter that information in a database to see which hours are most common.
To make office hours more effective, professors could also help students focus by providing study guide questions on a weekly topic. Students typically attend TA office hours more often, and their structure undeniably contributes to a higher attendance.
Coming in to work out a specific essay prompt or go over homework questions checked incorrect make the interaction smoother and more productive.
Students don’t necessarily need to be provided with a concrete plan to be able to make a move, but a professor doing so might jump-start some early studying or help eliminate uncertainty over what to bring up. Professors always give students the option of e-mailing them for a new appointment time should their hours not work, and having something specific to meet over might be more encouraging.
There are certainly steps professors can take, but they provide their services and it is up to us to make use of them.
The more comfortable you are asking a professor for meaningful help, the more they will be willing to sincerely accommodate your concerns, both with the course and possibly later during your academic career.
The consequences of a budget crisis and a digital society, in which we now see earning an entire degree online as a viable option, exacerbate how impersonal a university with more than 20,000 students can feel. Online sources are helpful and inevitable, but overlooking the importance of personal relationships with professors can truly restrict an education.
As mostly full-time students at a school like UCLA, we are accustomed to the level of preparation needed to succeed academically. And we are given the opportunity ““ weekly opportunities ““ to become more than a nine-digit number, to help sift through the seas of material and gain focus and inevitably a more powerful education.
_Like chatting with professors during
office hours? E-mail Moradi at
imoradi@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu._