Take, for example, the student who wants to use the office hour as a time to unpack all kinds of excuses for missed classes and/or late work. Most of these melodramatic performances are as boring as they are, well, dubious. So, I tell such students that I'm willing to listen to their sad tales, but only after they sign a release form giving me all rights to the material for stage, screen, and television. I mean it as a joke, although when one student laid out the story of how his ex-girlfriend let herself into his apartment (she still had a key) and took a meat cleaver to his water bed -- all this by way of explaining how his paper "drowned" -- I am now glad that I have possession of the signed form.-- Sanford Pinsker, The Irascible Professor

Ingenious thinking! I love Pinsker's idea in the article cited above, about putting a model "A" paper from the class assignment in the departmental office (or if I were doing it, online or on reserve), and demanding that students read it before they come to his office to argue for a higher grade. It turns the experience into a learning moment, even if it doesn't entirely dissuade the angry student from complaining.

I seem to get a lot of traffic during office hours, and I prefer that to the solitude that I might otherwise garner if I, say, held them at 8am or put a "do not disturb" sign on my door. Here's some random thoughts about how I approach them:

• Scheduling: I try to stagger my hours in my weekly schedule, if possible. What that means is I might hold them at 2pm on Mon/Wed and on 4pm on Tues/Thurs. Making myself available on even and odd days (e.g Mondays and Tuesdays, not just Mon Wed Fri) ensures that students will be less likely to have classes blocked out during my hours. I also recognize that students are more likely to come visit during afternoons or early evenings than early mornings. I always try to have at least one hour in the very late afternoon, for commuters or adult students: usually this is a 5-6pm block of time, scheduled right before a night class.

  
  

• Course Management: Obviously, you can get a lot of grading done during office hours, especially if no one drops by. I usually put my office hours in time slots before I have to teach, in order that I might get any last minute prepping/copying/reading done before a particular class. For classes that meet two days a week or less -- like my night classes -- I often make my office hours a paper collection deadline, asking students to drop off papers during my office hours. That often also invites some of them to drop by and talk about class issues...though many act like they have a train to catch.

  
  

• One Mandatory Meeting: In my writing classes, I typically have one mandatory meeting in my office with the student, to talk about a paper I've recently commented on. I ask them to bring their various drafts, and the readings they're responding to (or the research they've acquired, if any). I try to do this early in the term; especially with freshmen, it "humanizes" the process of learning for them, and opens many new students' eyes to the fact that office hours really are for them. After the "mandatory" meeting, which students usually find liberating in some way, I typically get a number of "returning" visits. In the very least, I know that they will be more willing to talk during class discussions. They suddenly feel a personal investment in the class they hadn't felt before.

  
  

• Consulting Hours: Maybe office hours should be "consulting hours" instead. "Office" is too officious. I find it odd that students pay thousands of dollars to consult with us in class, but rarely take advantage of the office hours. I think one of the reasons that students avoid office hours is out of fear: territorial studies would tell us that the office is the professor's "turf" whereas a classroom is more of an open field, in comparison. It's good to hold "office hours" outside of the office -- whether they're through "virtual office hours" (where you sit in a chatroom or promise to answer e-mail questions rapidly) or simply by arranging in advance to hold hours in the student union building, or a talk-friendly section of the library, or even out on the lawn. Bring a book or some papers to grade, and wait. I sometimes put post-it notes on my office door that say something like: "I'm downstairs in the cafeteria today: come join me."

  
  

• Furniture Talk: The way that desks and chairs are arranged in a professor's office send subtle signals. If you use your desk to block your doorway with a confrontational barrier like they do at, say, a police station, well then you're not only being uninviting, you're also responsible for all those nervous tics the students make when they do come talk to you. Think of the angles of the furniture: are they more "open" than "closed"? Do they invite conversation and informality, or do they put too many barriers between you and the student. While it's true that you may not want to be completely open and intimite with your students -- like, say, sitting beside them on a big puffy couch -- you might find that rearranging the furniture liberates some of the angst students have when they come to your office. So will little details like having family pictures on the desk, putting art on the walls that reflects your personality, having knick nacks or other things that students can look at when they want to avoid eye contact, or conversation pieces to get the shy ones talking...etc., etc. Be professional, yet open. [By the way, always be on the look-out for opportunities to trade office furnishings: sometimes you can get a chair or table from another building on campus, if they're refurnishing or throwing old materials out.]

  
  

• Order: This is probably my biggest weakness. And I'm not alone. Most of the professors I know are a little disorderly. We've all got too much on our mind to be troubled with filing all that paperwork on our tabletop or straightening out our bookshelves. It's tough to keep everything organized and in its place. I'm terrible with my inbox: it's still overflowing with last year's flyers and invitations. I've also still got a poster/calendar from 2002 on the wall. But I know I can do better. I'm not anal retentive about keeping my office clean and organized, but I do believe that the messier it is, the less respect I get from students (though I'm sure most of their dorm rooms are probably condemnable). Students expect their leaders to be more organized than they are; some go so far as to assume that a disorderly office is a reflection of a disorderly mind. You don't want to deck out the office with chiffon and make it look like a setpiece from The Stepford Wives, but you don't want it to smell like a locker room, either. At the bare minimum, I try to give my office the once-over at least once during winter and summer breaks -- even going so far as to clean things that the cleaning staff misses (like the windows). I've also made use of work study students before, asking them to help me reorder my bookshelves or sort through paperwork.

  
  

• Student Management: I always enjoy meeting with students and discussing course material, their lives, and even just shooting the breeze. But sometimes students wear out their welcome or haunt my doorstep. And you can always reposition the furniture or change your hours if you find yourself being pulled into a quagmire of endless student meetings that spill over beyond your regular hours and so forth. There are ways of managing students during office hours without resorting to offensive tactics or pleading cries of overwork. The best way, of course, is to use appointment scheduling effectively. Make appointments that have time limits in advance. Sometimes, you can line up these appointments, too, so that the student feels the weight of the people lining up outside the door. Another strategy is to end the consultation just as one would end a committee meeting when the hour is up: wind up the conversation by summarizing the key issues, and then breaking out the calendar and asking the student to schedule a follow-up to discuss them. Give them an "out" if they don't want to continue talking. You can also just start using phrases like "Next time we meet, we'll discuss X" or "Journal about that topic and let me read your thoughts when I grade it later on." Highlight the larger context of the conversation, as part of a larger process of learning. Sometimes you have to be firm. Set ground rules for any follow-up meeting: "Next time we talk, bring your textbook with specific questions about the reading."
  

But sometimes the openness can pay off in other ways. Some students work harder to get an "A"; students write better evaluations; students are more openly engaged in class discussions. Some have been kind enough to bring me coffee or other treats, though I typically don't invite that. I've had students come to me to discuss --- gasp! -- independent research in literary theory and to talk about readings we didn't get to discuss openly in class. And when I'm sitting in my office, talking with a student about issues for their own sake, or to help the student with something they want to learn just because they want to learn it -- rather than just for the sake of a grade -- then that's when I know I'm doing office hours right.

Hmm.... I might develop this into an article some day. Post your own tips here, by clicking on "comments" below, if you like!

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