What did I miss during Office Hours?

What are University Office Hours?

I am embarrassed that I just learned about the benefits of a professor’s office hours in the college and university systems.  If you were to think that I didn’t take advantage of office hours in college, you would be correct.  What sucks about my lack of learning is that I also just made the connection as to how learning about office hours in college could make a huge difference in corporate life.  Better late than never.    

I just finished interviewing a recent college graduate who had listed National Merit Scholar on their resume.  I tossed them a softball to get the candidates to discuss something they were comfortable and proud about.  “I see you have National Merit Scholar listed on your resume.  Can you talk to me about this?  What does it mean, and how did you accomplish this?” 

It was a revelation. It was a Malcolm Gladwell moment.

The first half of the candidate’s answers to the question didn’t surprise me as I hear some version of this regularly.  “School was easy for me.  I got a 3.6 GPA, which is easy because it is laid out.  You know what you have to study and when papers are due. They explain exactly what you are going to be tested on.  If something is laid out for me like that, I can do very well.”

For the record, the above answer doesn’t give you any points in an interview situation.  If you are going to say something is “easy” in an interview, then you should have aced it.  In other words, you should have walked away with a 4.0 GPA. 

Even if you got a 4.0 and said it was “easy for you,” then you should have cured polio, put a man on the moon, or learned how to juggle 5 balls at once (anyone can juggle 3).

What she said next turned me upside down

“If you go to the office hours, the professor will work with your grade.  You won’t go from a D to an A, but even if you don’t do well on the tests, going to office hours shows that you are trying. You will receive a better grade.” 

Whooaaa!  This wasn’t a great answer for me either on several levels.  This answer told me that this candidate figured that if she showed an effort, that was enough.  Here at ACME Publishing, we are running a business. Effort doesn’t count; results count. We need fricken results here, people, not effort.   There are no trophies at this company for showing up.   

But I had never heard of this “go to the professor’s office hours and get a better grade” insight. I had never gone to “office hours.” I asked the candidate, “Wait a minute, back up here. If you attend office hours, do you get a better grade?”

The response wasn’t just an embarrassment or meek. “Yes.”  Her answer was an “Oh Yeah”.  It smacked of “Duhhhh OMG YEsssss”.  This answer was an eyes-wide-open, head shaking up and down, all teeth showing, enthusiastic “YES”!

I took a few notes and then moved on to the next question. 

Then it hit me

This wasn’t just a single class she talked about; this was her entire academic career.  She was jacking her grades every quarter, with every class.  This wasn’t the occasional single class going from a B to a B+ once a year.  This was every class, every quarter, for 4 years. 

A single class with an improved grade isn’t going to change an overall GPA over 4 years, but with every class, every quarter, every year.  . .  that could be the difference between a 3.2 and a 3.5.  That is significant.  That differs between listing National Merit Scholar on your resume and “not.”  I have to admit, this is “Nasty”.   

This was all legit

I asked the candidate, “What do you do in Professor Office Hours?  How long do you stay there?  What do you ask them?”  For the record, this wasn’t a coed in an extra short plaid skirt, white knee socks, and ponytails sucking on a lolly.   

Yes, some could say “If you spend time with your professor, you are probably more interested in your grades, care more, and it is THESE qualities that translate to a better grade”.  This is NOT what she was saying.  What I heard, what she clarified, was that grades were being jacked because the professor knew who you were.  Because he knew your face and could identify you, he would “work with you.”        

Three classes a quarter means she is spending 1 hour a week in Office hours to jack her grade by 10%.  Let’s call it a 90-minute-a-week investment with travel time.    

Not my culture to ask for help

As a guy who grew up in a culture where you don’t question your elders, you try to do everything you can to figure it out on your own. This just wasn’t something I would even think of doing.  I come from a background where you use available resources.  You do not waste the valuable time of your elders. . . . Even if I thought about Office Hours, I wouldn’t have gone.  Well, let’s face it, I didn’t.   

I asked her:  “How did you know to go to the Professor’s office?  How did you know that this would help your grades?  Did you go to a private high school where this was acceptable?”

I was trying to figure out where this behavior evolved.  How did she figure this out?  What lucky Darwinian “zig” did she make where I obviously “zagged”?  I was close to being eliminated from the gene pool, but I hadn’t even realized how close to Cro-Magnum extinction I was. 

Even if the professor said in class, “I hold office hours and will answer any questions,” I wouldn’t have shown up.  I know because I didn’t show up.   If it took reading something 10 times to understand which way was up, that is what I did.

Conditioned in highschool

I was thinking about my high school career, and there was no “staying after class to ask questions.”  The bell rang, and we had 5 minutes to move to the next class.  This was a system of efficiency designed to keep students from loitering in the halls of my inner-city high school – an environment where guns and weapons were not uncommon and didn’t go well with loitering.  Visiting the teacher was because you did something wrong and were being punished.  Visiting the teacher after hours was not for higher learning.   

What the candidate said next made complete sense and I realized how effectively this could and does transfer to the business world as well. 

“There are 200 students in a class, and the professor isn’t going to get to know you if you do not visit them.  They don’t know you from anyone else. They don’t know that you are trying or interested.” 

Again, I came from a background that didn’t care about the effort.  My parents cared about the bottom line, the final result, and nothing else.  I could have spent 50 hours a week studying for a single class.  B+ equals FAIL, and I had my fair share of failures.   

The benefit of Office Hours

I quickly realized that this behavior could be directly transferred to Corporate America.  Had I gone to the professor’s office hours, who knows where my grades would have ended up?  I would have been more inclined to visit with the first few managers I reported to when I got to corporate America.  Maybe I would have learned to work with them as an ally instead of being afraid of them or questioning what I didn’t understand negatively.  I am confident I could have saved 20 hours a week studying for a single college class and saved more time when working on a simple project in corporate America.  I reached out to peers who were usually also struggling.  These were like-minded peers who shared my mentality.  They didn’t take advantage of office hours.   

As a guy who has seen employees and managers interact across multiple organizations of all sizes, both public and private, trust me on the following:

Employees who make an effort to get to know their manager do better.  Employees who find a commonality with their managers do better. 

The skill of visiting the professor and jacking grades can be directly tied. Meeting with your manager regularly and growing your career or salary are the same.  More about this to come.  

You can say it is because the employee who visits their manager cares about their career.  You can tell the employee is just sucking up.  Or you can think what I do.  It is human nature to like someone you have something in common with.  I believe that it’s human nature to help someone if you want them.  It will probably be a tough road if you don’t share a commonality with your manager and don’t try to get to know them.  You took responsibility for YOUR grade, and you approached your professor.  Take responsibility for your career and approach your manager. 

When you get along with your manager, things go easier.  “I’m just saying.”   

See you at the after party,

HRNasty 

nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky, and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone who is good at something. “He has a nasty forkball”.

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