Office hours present an opportunity to explore deeper issues that transcend the course content. In-depth conversations with faculty can lead to high-quality recommendations for jobs and graduate school. Your instructor can become a mentor and a guide to success post college.

Tips for Office Hours:

• Be polite
  • Knock, don’t just walk in.
  • Ask if the instructor has time to talk.
  • When leaving, say thanks and that you are enjoying the class.
• Be considerate
  • Introduce yourself.
  • Don’t stay longer than the posted office hours.
  • Don’t show up outside of office hours without an appointment.
• Be prepared
  • Start with one clear question and let your instructor respond without interruption.
  • Bring a few questions to spur discussion and let them guide the conversation.

1. Take your own notes

• Research has shown that students who take notes during class perform better on exams. The high cognitive effort note-taking requires activates brain processes involved in learning and memory. When taking notes, students become more attentive, aiding in comprehension and more engagement in class. Relying only on notes written for you causes you to learn less in lectures.

        2. Take better notes

• Take a lot of notes and try to organize them into topic areas. Include spoken comments by the professor and your classmates. Note points of emphasis like when your teacher says something is important or might be on a test.

        3. Read your notes after class

• You can add comments or questions to your notes for follow up. Ask your teacher to elaborate on a confusing topic either in class or during office hours.

Brainstorm potential topics

• Speak with your teacher about your ideas and connect your topic to class discussions and lectures. Ask your instructor for recommendations on journals, books and websites for information on your topic. Get topic approval from your professor before writing.

Compile your ideas and information into one document

• Write and cut/paste all of the information you might use for your paper. This may be excerpts from sources, your own ideas, questions to address, links to websites and articles. Don’t worry about organization at this point.

Identify 3 or 4 main points

• This is the time to refine your ideas and confirm that you have a topic that is interesting to you and worthy of research. Reading through these few sentences should feel like a brief summary of your paper.

Create an outline

• Go back to your ideas document and pull the major concepts out to create a detailed outline. This will create a structure for your writing.

Start Writing

• Approach your paper as a series of smaller sections, each serving to support a clear topic. Incorporate the facts, examples, and quotes from sources into this section. Write an introduction and conclusion last.

Less is more

• As you edit, search for extra words that don’t add to the overall meaning of your sentences. Remove them.

Start strong

• Make your introduction and first page interesting and strong. Write your introduction last so you can spend a bit more time on it. If the first page is written well the instructor is more likely to see it as an A paper.

Find your voice

• Ask yourself what interests you about the topic and what questions you have. This will make your writing more engaging and bring life to your writing.

Just write

• Don’t edit as you write the first draft. Start with a bit of research on your topic, then write a page or two in your own words. Come back to it the following day and start to edit.