@bow-ties-and-daydreams I hope you don't mind me borrowing your tags. You've given me an opportunity to briefly mention something worth mentioning:
'Just nerd out about the topic' is absolutely the point of office hours, and also something nearly every professor will be delighted to do (so long as there isn't a student who has a problem that needs a time-sensitive solution waiting - if there is, let them go first. Also occasionally people in office hours are crying and it's best to give them some space and pretend you don't notice). For the most part professors have way more stuff to talk about than can possibly fit into the time and level of the course, so they love it when students come by to ask them follow-up questions. Even if you've misinterpreted something and the direction you're proposing isn't as fruitful as it seemed, knowing where students are misinterpreting things is extremely useful from my side of the lectern.
But there's also a more general issue at play here, and I don't know what to do about it. I think that professors are, in general, absolutely terrible at explaining why they are doing what they are doing, and why the institutions of the course are the way they are. When students don't know why things are the way they are the requirements feel frustrating and stifling, and the support infrastructure (like office hours) goes unused, which makes the professors feel frustrated and underappreciated in turn. In the end it's a lot of frustration and waste caused by a pretty simple miscommunication.
By the time a professor ends up in front of a class, they have typically been in the higher-ed system for a minimum of 7 years (4 years undergrad, 3 years grad school). That's a long time to acclimate to the weird customs of the academe. A friend of mine caused a bit of a stir in our mutual academic circle not long ago for suggesting that 'office hours' be renamed 'student hours' to more strongly imply that it was a time for students (not just a time in which I am in my office). She got a lot of pushback for the mere suggestion, mostly from older profs who were baffled that students wouldn't know what 'office hours' meant. It's inevitable that time will eventually separate our perspective from that of the undergraduates, but we need to remember that it's going to do that.
That means there are two pieces of professorial advice I'd like to hand out.
First, for the students. If you don't know what the purpose of an assignment or policy is, you should ask. Be polite when you do so, of course, and don't assume ill intent or laziness on your instructor's part. There are usually reasons for the way things are. But don't let that hold you back from asking, and don't assume if you don't know. If you frame it as a genuine interest in the academic system, rather than an attempt to game it, your interlocutor will usually be pretty forthcoming. And you'll do them the great courtesy of reminding them that their perspective is not universal. Everyone forgets that sometimes.
Second, for the profs. I haven't been doing this forever, but I do have several years of teaching at a few different institutions under my belt, and in that time I have never experienced any negative side effects of being very clear and explicit with students about why I am assigning them what I am assigning them. Some profs seem reticent to do this, out of a fear that students will game the system somehow. I don't think this is a serious concern. And even if it were a problem, it would still be worth being clear. One of the reasons that parental education is such a strong predictor of later academic success is because academia is full of very specific rules and expectations, and those expectations are not being conveyed or conveyed correctly in high school. People who grow up in contexts where they have people to ask about academia's weird rules tend to do better, and it's not a coincidence. As professors we can't change this overnight, but we can start taking steps to even the playing field. That includes being clear. Not assuming that our students know the game already. Assuming the best of them - that they want to learn, they just don't know how; rather than the worst - that they don't care. Maybe some of them don't care. Explain anyway. It's worth being wrong a hundred times if it means being right just that one time. Helping one student who couldn't have seen their way through otherwise.
Very few people in academia - students and teachers - are operating in bad faith. It's worth making sure you're not just failing to communicate before you assume that, on either side of the lectern.
jacobvanloon
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