How to take advantage of office hours

Your learning shouldn’t begin and end in lecture theatres: you should take every advantage that you can get. Talk to other students. Network with professors. Professors are key.

If you have a relationship with at least a few profs, then they can help you later on with advice, suggestions, and recommendation letters. Your way in is through office hours.

Here are some tips to help you make yourself visible without being a pest.

• Introduce yourself to the professor. Here, you have to take the initiative. Every professor has office hours, time specifically set aside for students to get extra help, so take advantage. If you come in with questions (and with a notebook and pen ready of course), then your professor is more likely to remember you, and more likely to associate your face with your name.


• Address your professor properly. Call your professor “doctor” or “professor,” and not “sir” or “miss.”


• Bring questions – ideally, about content, not coursework, at least at first. You should try to show the professor that you see the big picture, and that you’re not just in it for the grades. Demonstrate that you’re engaged with the coursework, and that you find the subject matter interesting. Do make sure that your questions are professor appropriate, and that you’re not asking questions that you can have answered in other venues, such as in tutorials.


• Bring your work. Bring a notebook or loose-leaf paper with questions, and with the work you’ve done to try to answer the questions on your own. This will demonstrate that you respect the professor’s time, and will show that you really are engaged with the class.


• Don’t be a marks mercenary. Make sure that your first introductions to your professors aren’t right before a midterm or final exam. Don’t just ask about what will be on tests. Particularly during your first visit, make sure that you establish that you’re genuinely interested in their subject and their work.


• Thank the professor. Make sure that you can point to a lecture that you found especially interesting. Show that you value the class and the content.


• Say hello around campus. Don’t forget to remain a friendly face, even when not in the lecture theatre. Make sure to smile, wave, say hello if you see your profs around campus. They’ll appreciate it, and will be more likely to remember you.

Of course, you shouldn’t bring all questions to your professors. Some questions should be asked in labs and tutorials.