Monday:
8-11am–onsite at local high school (2 courses)
11-11:30am–transit time
11:30am-12:40pm–office
12:40-1:55pm–broadcasting ITV class to 2 area high schools
Tuesday:
9-9:55am–office
9:55-11:10am–broadcasting ITV class to 2 area high schools
11:10am-12:30pm–office
12:30-1:50pm–sophomore literature class in my building
1:50-3pm–office
Wednesday: Same as Monday
Thursday: Same as Tuesday, except:
3pm-6pm–office/on campus
6:30-9:20pm–night class at remote campus
One way to look at it: We’re going to have to grade that homework you’re working on, eventually. Right answers are much easier to grade than wrong answers, and also a lot less frustrating. So by giving the students a little help now, we’re saving ourselves a headache later.
Quoth pseudotriton:
Even those, I don’t really mind, since at least it means they give a damn. And there are times when the grading of a question really is debatable, and sometimes, we just plain make mistakes. And then there’s the occasions (which do come up) where the student was actually correctly using a perfectly valid method that was completely unlike any method that had ever occurred to me.
The only gripe I have about office hours as a student is when a professor isn’t in his/her office during posted office hours. I understand that stuff comes up; a class may need to be covered, or there is a meeting or what have you. Just tape a note on the door telling me so I can come back another time. Thank you.
When I was a graduate assistant, I did not particularly want them to show up, but if they did show up I wanted them to do it during office hours. Not some other time, like when I was on my way out the door heading for, say, the bar.
However, I have to credit this program for educating me to the fact that I am really not cut out to teach anything. A normal person would probably have an entirely different response.
I don’t mind naming my alma mater…Arizona State University.
I learned quickly that professors rarely want anyone to come to their office hours. It was obviously an intrusion on their time and their body language/tone made it very clear. I’d try every semester, and a majority of the time I always felt about two inches tall and never went back.
Then for graduate school I went to Lewis and Clark College, which is a VERY small college. I loved going to office hours and talking with my professors. In fact, it’s been a couple decades and they STILL know my name, although I only pop in once in a while. (And the fact that most are still there says a lot, too.)
I’m very glad to see such positive responses to this thread, but it certainly wasn’t always so for me.
Just an anecdote about Thorstein Veblen…the celebrated economist.
His office door had a sign that read “Ofiice Hours” 9:00 AM to 9:15 AM.
Not too accessible.
Conversely, when my office hours were 10-1PM BY APPOINTMENT, people would e-mail saying they’d be there at 10, and become indignant when I left at 12:55. It’s not a damn tuck shop - I’m not going to stay if no one’s there. You could have spent fifteen seconds e-mailing me to say you’d be late. Or text me*. Or whatever…
it was a very small, incestuous department. We gave out cell numbers and MSN contacts to students. I don’t recommend it as a rule of thumb, but it worked out ok!
Ah, but don’t you know that the students are customers and paying your salary???
(
Seriously, though, some of them act as if we should be on call 24/7.
Yes. I want my students to succeed. I want them to understand the field to which I’ve dedicated my adult life, both as a clinician and researcher and as an academic. I want to see my students’ faces light up as they finally understand a concept they’ve struggled to understand. I want to have conversations with students about their ideas, and maybe get some of them to want to go into my field.
Yes, I do wish that more of the students that did use office hours would come with actual questions about the material, rather than hostile arguments with me that they deserved one more point on a low-stakes assignment, because they’ve “never earned anything less than an A+.”
I do. I owe it to my students. They’ve worked hard on those semester-long projects, and I owe them my attention and feedback. However, I don’t have those semester projects due on the last day - I have them due a couple of weeks before, so I can get them their project grades before the end of the semester.
It depends on the email. If the student’s confusion is quite profound, I encourage them to come in so we can have an in-depth conversation face to face. If the student is asking a question that’s clearly designed to get me to give them answers for an exam or assignment, then I offer some guidance, but don’t give them the answer.
If the email is written by a student clearly trying their best to grasp the material, I will answer those emails all day long. Whiny emails? Not so much.
We’re expected to hold a minimum of one office hour per week per class taught, which works out to five hours a week at a minimum. We’re encouraged to hold more, at various times (not just all mornings, or all afternoons) to accommodate as many student schedules as possible.
Being a TA was fun, but you couldn’t get so engrossed in TA work that you neglect the reason why you’re in grad school. It’s to get that degree. I enjoyed office hours and always left the door opened during office hours to encourage entry. There were always regulars who had questions or problems to discuss. And then there were the ones who needed to discuss their grades or class performances in private. Occasionally some students wanted advice about a major or career choice. Having students come by during office hours was preferred, but when there were no takers I always had things to do, like grading quizzes or reviewing lecture notes or working on my own research. It’s just another hour in the office with or without students. Oh, one other thing. I must come clean on. I always felt that students who made the effort to seek me out during office hours as the more diligent ones. And when grading comes around and those students are on the border, like between a B+ or an A-, they’d get the higher grade, always.
Just to clarify: OF COURSE, there are legitimate discussions of grades, but I’m talking about negotiations, which I find inappropriate: I judge someone’s work to be worthy of a B-, by pretty clear standards, and he comes in to my office and asks NOT how he can improve his grade on future papers (though that should be clear enough from my grading rubric and comments) BUT how THIS paper could be graded as an A paper.
As to length of essays, my policy (which I’ll share with the class) is I think this topic can generally be covered in 8-12 pages, though a really clear, succinct college writer trying to pare his argument down to the essentials might be able to do a thorough job on it in as as six. A professional writer could do it in four pages, maybe fewer, but everyone in the class is a long way from being close to a professional writer. With that said, I’ll often get students handing in 3 page essays, and getting Ds and Fs on them, which to me is like asking for a D or an F.
I was amazed at the difference in my attitude about office hours from when I was an undergrad (18 -22) compared to when I went back to school at 32. School was no longer a game to win but instead a conscious investment in my future. Probably because I was older and a bit more secure in myself, I didn’t see the professors as adversaries so much as colleagues. To me, office hours were something my tuition was paying for, and I wasn’t about to waste the opportunity for personal instruction from an expert. I mean, how much would you have to pay today to consult a Ph.D. level statistician or linguist, for instance? $125 an hour? $200? And they in turn fairly chomped at the bit for the opportunity to expound on subjects they’d spent the adult lives on.
As with the others, I loved the one on one interaction of office hours when I started to teach classes, but became jaded with the same excuses and pleadings. Trust me, after a while, you’ve heard it all.
Missed the edit window: Although I was never offered sex for grades, which was bit of a disappointment. Everyone else I knew had been at one time or another, and I felt a bit left out.
Most of the time, when I went to see a prof or TA during their established office hours, they were nowhere to be found. Even if I’d made an appointment just to ensure they’d be there. Used to piss me off that I’d walked from the ass end of campus, uphill both ways in freezing rain, to arrive at my appointment on time and the fucker wouldn’t be there.
I can think of maybe two occasions in four years of college when I actually managed to catch the instructor in his or her office when they said they’d be there… and both of those were tenured full professors.
The only TA I managed to catch was a friend of mine who was crushing on me. He signed off on Independent Study credit for editing his dissertation. And he made really great coffee in his lab. (Sort of cobbled together a French press using beakers, filters, and a Bunsen burner.)
I almost have to beg my students to come to office hours. Office hours during a typical semester go something like this:
Week 1: A few students might come, usually begging to be allowed into an already-full class.
Weeks 2-6: I sit alone in my office.
Weeks 7- 8: a few students who bombed the short essay or the mid-term panic when they realize that i don’t give out A’s just for showing up, and come to office hours in an effort to show me that they’re serious about passing the class. They don’t actually want to do anything, or to talk about the material; they just want to assure me that they’re going to work hard for the rest of the semester.
Weeks 9-13: this is generally the time when students who are truly interested in doing well take the opportunity to bring drafts of their research paper for me to look over. Students who do this are, by definition, organized enough to have a draft ready a few weeks before the paper is due. I encourage all my students to take advantage of the fact that i’m willing to read drafts and offer suggestions, but usually only two or three in each class actually do it.
Weeks 14-15: students who have done nothing all semester suddenly realize that they’re not going to pass the course, and come to office hours asking what they can do to make up for the fact that they’ve missed half the class meetings and failed to turn in most of the written work.
The above is, of course, something of a caricature, but it’s not completely off the mark. For the first half of the semester, i generally get almost no-one coming to office hours at all, despite the fact that the hours are listed on the course website, and i remind students about them in class at least once a week.
I even say to the students, “Look, my office hours are there for you to use. If you don’t come and see me, i usually spend the time browsing the internet or watching baseball, so if you have a problem or a question, please don’t hesitate to come.”
I tell students that if they have substantive questions about course material, they should come to office hours rather than write an email.
There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, meeting face to face allows me to ask questions and work out exactly what the students does and does not understand. It’s easier to probe their knowledge and offer useful advice and assistance if you can talk to them directly.
Second, it gives me an opportunity to get to know them better. I actually like meeting with students, because in class it’s hard to get to know them except in a fairly general way.
Third, it ensures that the students need to make some effort of their own in order to get help. Some students who write emails asking for assistance don’t actually want help understanding the material, they just want you to give them The Answer. Also, their questions are often so broad that it would take me half a day to answer in an email. I’ve had students write emails along the lines of, “I didn’t understand the Puritans’ ideas about the Covenant of Grace. Could you explain it to me.” I’m sorry, but i’m not going to write a 2,000-word email reiterating what we’ve already done in class. I want the student to come and meet with me so i can work out what they know, what they don’t, and what i need to clarify.
I constantly reiterate this point to my students.
I even tell them, “Grading an A paper is far, far easier—in terms of time and effort—than grading a B or C or D paper. I’d be happy if you all wrote A papers, because it would make my job a breeze.” About the only thing easier to grade than an A paper is an F, because an F is usually so bad that it’s clearly the result of a complete lack of effort on the student’s part.
Yeah, not being there during your posted hours is shitty, especially if you don’t leave a note explaining why you were called away.
I turned in at least two papers that the profs admitted later they’d never read. My coursework and tests were good enough that unless I’d written in Lorem Ipsum, my grade wasn’t going to change. Faced with 40 40 page papers and two days to get grades in, they’d sort out students like me, grade the papers that made a difference, then flip through mine and a few others to make sure we’d done work similar in quality to what I’d done to date.
Do the work, there is no guarantee that you’ll get lazy profs like I did. And even the lazy profs I had flipped through the work.
I’m on the tenure track, and the most valuable thing I have is time. You can’t really do anything productive during office hours, and reading the Dope is something I can do from home.
If I know someone is coming by, it’s cool, especially if I know why you’re coming. A quick email saying you want to ask about the lecture, plans for grad school, etc.
My neice is now a Junior at Rose Hulman, an engineering school. Her Freshman year, she was struggling a bit with calculus. Her professor invited her to come each day to his office and do her homework there, where he could answer questions. Of course, it’s easier because they have a 11-1 student/faculty ratio.
I was pretty short earlier, but as I said, if I’m going to trek down to campus, I want it to be worthwhile. So sitting on my thumbs doing filing is a waste. I can’t really do hardcore work, because then when someone comes in I’m all out of sorts.
I like to know why I’m meeting, and the meeting to have a point. I typically have 20-30 minutes per slot so it’s imperative that we get started on time and finish (of course). I am a chatty guy so sometimes that’s my fault.
I like talking about course material, and particularly, how students are ruminating and making connections on their own. I can certainly do “what’s the point of this assignment?” meetings but I use rubrics and spend a lot of course time on this… so it’s not my favorite type of meeting.
The worse meetings are the ones where students bitch about grades. I tell students straight up that I don’t have the time or interest to debate grades. I assign rubrics, and of course, I understand there is some subjectivity in assessing academic work. But I have said on more than one occasion that I’ll change a grade in a second, if it will get you out of my door and I can move on to more important things. Of course, I will never write a letter of recommendation for you. But you decide what’s more important. (I should point out that I teach in a grad program, where the grades don’t matter anywhere to the extent that students tend to think. It’s the relationships you develop with faculty.)
