When are your Office Hours? Should I make an appointment? Do you ever meet with students outside Office Hours?

I announce my current Office Hours, as well as all current policies about Office Hours and meetings, under Resources (which you can link to using the menu bar above, or just click here). Make sure to click on “Current Office Hours” when you get there!

My Office Hours are generally for casual drop-ins, but if you need to, you can email me to reserve a ten-minute slot of one-on-one time.

I cannot and will not, under any circumstances, meet with undergraduate students outside of the scheduled Office Hours hours I make available each week while classes are in session. (Outside of Office Hours, I can only meet with graduate students or fellow faculty.)

If it is difficult for you to attend the currently scheduled undergraduate Office Hours, remember that I also make myself available for brief one-on-one meetings in the ten minutes before class starts (remember that U of T class start at ten minutes after the officially scheduled time) and during breaks in long sessions.  If you only need to talk to me for a few minutes (say, to make up comprehension questions), try approaching me then.

If you have a regular scheduling conflict with my currently scheduled Office Hours, please let me know at the beginning of term — I’ll give you top priority to speak to me before class and during breaks.  If enough students let me know at the beginning of term that they cannot make the hours as I’ve scheduled them, then I change the scheduled hours.

Just like you, professors at the U of T have a wide array of weekly responsibilities that we must juggle; in fact, as Philip Guo puts it, professional academics “receive work from at least seven independent sources,” none of which “know of or care about one another.” For most of us (myself included), every work hour is taken up, and indeed overstuffed — with our considerable research, teaching, and service responsibilities. To add another 15 minutes to our workday is to, essentially, ask us to stay at work 15 minutes late (without paying us for that extra time) — which isn’t really fair to us or to our families, especially when you consider that it sets a precedent for 75 or more other undergraduates per term to ask the same thing.

If you can’t attend Office Hours as they’re currently scheduled, then one of us simply must rearrange our schedule to fit the other person’s needs. It may be just as difficult for you to rearrange your schedule as for me to rearrange mine — but since a rearrangement on my part would set an impossible precedent for dozens of other students, and since you’re the one initiating the request, then it’s more reasonable to expect you to make the necessary rearrangements.