Office Hours

Office hours are one of my favorite resources on campus for a couple reasons.  There are other resources off campus such as LionTutors and PSUKnowHow, which provide review sessions for exams and offer private tutoring.  These places are great but will cost you a good bit if you use them frequently.  Office hours are times during the day that your professor will set aside solely to answer any question you may have on homework, lecture material, or any other information pertaining to the class.  This is your chance to get one-on-one help from a professor that could teach from classes of 50 to 400.  They take time out of their day specifically to assist students with class material and many times there are only one or two students who attend and often there are none at all.  This basically means you can have a FREE personal tutor who knows what is going to be on your exams. 

Most of the time your professor will hold office hours each day at varying time to try to accommodate to each student’s schedules.  If for some reason none of the times the professor has set aside work with your schedule they are often very willing to schedule a different time with you.  As a freshman, there are typically many sections of your math, chemistry, and physics classes with different teachers teaching them as well.  This means that you can also attend other professor’s office hours if those times work better for you or if you feel that you better understand the information in the way they present it rather than the professor you have assigned for your section. 

Teaching Assistants (TA), will also hold office hours.  I personally prefer to go directly to the professor so they can put a name to a face in the larger class sizes you will be exposed to but TAs are very helpful as well and often can be better at explaining things because they are students as well.  I personally go to office hours almost every day of the week to keep of with the material that is being taught in lecture and it has been extremely helpful.  This one-on-one time your get with your professor can also be very helpful in creating a strong relationship with them.  This can lead to potential letters of recommendation for leadership positions in clubs and activities, scholarships, and jobs.  Between TAs and your professor, there are many options for office hours to help you make it through your classes during your time at Penn State! 

Megan Farrell is a junior majoring in Chemical Engineering, and is a Mentor for WEPO'15!