Mikaela BaratkaE&E Senior; pre-PhD Professors aren’t scary. In fact, they want you attending their office hours and asking questions so that they can gauge what content they may need to review more in depth to help you and your peers succeed. Their job is to make sure you leave the class with new knowledge, not feeling discouraged and like you didn’t learn anything. So how come when it comes to asking questions in class or during office hours our anxieties get the best of us and we freeze? Most likely you weren’t the only one in your 150-person lecture that didn’t quite understand a slide or concept, so why not just go and ask? I’m not a psychology major, so I can’t explain why our brains make us fear professors, but I am a student who has been there, so I can provide some tips on how to overcome that fear to ensure you do well in your classes. The general consensus seems to be that the scariest professors are the ones who teach the larger lectures. The good thing about this is that because they are teaching large courses, they almost certainly have some form of teaching assistant. Utilize them.
I found that first turning to UTAs (undergrad teaching assistant) in courses I was struggling with was much less intimidating, most likely because they are my peers. Instead of feeling whatever anxiety response I typically felt thinking about having to speak with a professor, it felt like I was studying with a friend with a better grasp on the content. Your UTAs have been in your shoes. They know what it takes to succeed in that particular course and most likely have tips to help you better understand that concept that seems to go over your head no matter how many times the professor goes over it in class. And they probably know the professor pretty well and can give some tips on talking with them! If you feel comfortable and still need some extra help, try to branch out to graduate TA office hours. They have more experience with the content and, at least to me, are far less intimidating because, in reality, they are only a few years older than you. Not to mention, their undergraduate career is not too far in their past, meaning they most likely remember how they felt when they needed to ask for help. In my experience, after a few weeks of utilizing TA and UTA office hours, suddenly talking to a professor seemed much less frightening. I think seeing how many resources a professor was providing me with to succeed made me realize that the judgment I once feared was all in my head. I recommend utilizing office hours for more than just exam prep as well. Stopping by for a few minutes to ask a clarifying question or double check your answer for a homework assignment is a great way to demonstrate to the instructors that you are putting in the effort. Better yet, you begin to build a rapport with them. In my personal experience, once I started utilizing all the types of office hours offered for a course, the next semester I was less afraid to ask for help. There are no stupid questions. Yes, everyone says that, but it’s true. If you think the question is too simple and you feel like you should know the answer already, that means you need to ask it sooner rather than later. Office hours are truly a judgment-free zone. Everyone learns in different ways, and maybe you need to be taught a concept differently than your peers. There is nothing wrong with that.
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January 2022
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