North Texas Daily

Professors’ office hours are a saving grace for students. They are incredibly beneficial to a student’s learning and their mental state when they start stressing out, especially during finals week.

The office hours themselves are not the issue though. They are undoubtedly great resources every student should utilize as many times they are able to. I just wish professors would hold more of them.

I completely understand professors are people too and have lives outside of the classroom, but some professors only have maybe one or two times a week they are able to meet with students for this extra help. Do not get me wrong, I am sure there are a number of professors who have multiple times a day they are open for office hours or even multiple days a week. Yet in my experience and professors I have learned from, the majority of professors have a very limited number of office hours available.

For example, I attended my statistics teacher’s office hours to get some extra help on one of my assignments recently. Out of the two she had, this one was the only time I was able to attend. When I walked in, she immediately asked if I had attended one of the SI sessions the previous day, which I then told her I had not. She proceeded to tell me I should have gone to the SI session to get the help I needed because she had to leave her office hours early. I asked her if she would have anymore the same week and she replied simply with a “No.”

Obviously, not all professors are like this, but I was certainly caught off guard because I made sure I attended the only office hour she had left to get the help I needed on the assignment I needed to finish. The assignment was due in the next couple of days when there were no more office hours and no more SI sessions for me to attend, so there I was, having to figure it out on my own.

If professors held just one more time a day, or even just one extra day dedicated to staying a little longer than they already do on campus, I think it would not only help students feel more comfortable with the subject matter but would also result in more students actually attending office hours.

I have heard from a number of professors that the main reason they do not have many office hours is that not nearly enough students show up to them. Inversely, professors feel as if the students already understand the material enough and do not need extra help. Or, students just view office hours as unnecessary. But what some don’t always know is that most students have other classes all throughout the day or other obligations they have to attend to, so most of the time they are unable to go to office hours because of time restrictions. Having more readily available for students would increase the overall attendance of them.

Professors already spend a majority of their time on campus dedicated to helping their students out, and I am so grateful to all of them, even the ones I do not have. If professors were to just add a couple more times for their office hours, I think students would certainly be ready to attend them to get the extra help they need and thus find an improvement in grades. It’s a win-win.