Hello, hello all and good morning, afternoon, or evening that you find this post!

I found that one of the big differences between college and high school was the importance of talking to my professors.

There were a few rare cases of high school teachers that I liked, that talked to me like an adult, or that worked with me enough for me to come in their classrooms at lunch time and get extra help or brainstorming with them. But, I found that there are way more college professors willing to work with you than high school teachers!

The differences are many.

In high school, first of all, teachers are more likely to know your name. This isn’t a jab at college professors so much as an observation of events. In high school you go to class every single day, you go to the same school for four years, and the teacher is part governmentally-appointed baby sitter in addition to instructor.

In college, the impetus is on you to learn your professor.

That may sound like a scary prospect, but I actually found it incredibly freeing! Instead of going to school because you’re legally required to, now you’re going to school for you. You’re going to get to learn what you want to, you can put in as much effort as you want to, and you are responsible for whatever outcome you want.

All that to say, it’s not the professor’s responsibility to make sure you’re doing the work.

Stanislaus is nice in that we have such small classroom sizes, so that you actually can get to know the professor if you want to, but even then it’s not like the professor will hunt you down if you don’t show up to class, don’t turn in any assignments, or don’t ever speak up in class. They’ll just fail or drop you.

So, what you can do instead, is show up to their office hours.

Office hours are just plain magical. The sooner and more frequent students take advantage of their professors’ office hours is directly correlated to how well students score in their classes. The evidence is so clear, in fact, that I’m a bit shocked when I learn how few students will actually visit with their professors and ask course questions.

Showing a genuine interest in the class, being polite, and just having a one-to-one conversation with a professor will sky-rocket you up to memorability. In a college of thousands of students, working with a professor who has perhaps taught tens of thousands over the course of their career, yours will become a name and face that will be remembered.

It’s the first baby step towards having an actual relationship with the person you’re paying to help guide your life. From there, the sky’s the limit.

I’ve had professors that explicitly do not have time to talk with students directly before and after classes but will answer your email at two in the morning. On the other hand, I’ve had professors that will get so enraptured with your after-class conversation that you’ll end up walking all the way to the parking lot and drawing diagrams in the dust of their car’s rear window.

It’s the conversations with professors that I remember most. More than the lectures, the tests, the flash cards, even more than the presentations and projects I did. It’s the talking.

Your professors are genuine people with lives outside of school, and it’s really neat when you can ground your learning with them to someone with actual experience and know-how rather than a figure behind a podium and a textbook.

Talking to your professors, visiting during office hours, participating in class, and generally making yourself as available as your professors make themselves to you, is what will turn the piece of paper of a degree into an actual functioning skillset in your brain.

(And it makes it way easier to get letters of recommendation!)

Talk to your professors!

You got this. I believe in you 🙂