My office hours, and generally those of the faculty in the math department, are drop-in. That means that you can show up and expect me to be there during my posted office hours (plus or minus five minutes if I’m running a little bit late). You don’t need to schedule an appointment to see me; I usually operate on a first-come, first-served basis. I try to keep the waiting short by limiting an office hours visit to 5-10 minutes if there’s a long line, which means you might not get all of your questions answered at once. That’s okay, though! One of the benefits of coming to office hours is that you’ll almost inevitably find someone working on the same problems you are, and you can team up to ask me more questions or figure out a solution together.
You might discover that I’m more likely to answer questions like, “Why should I use integration by parts on this problem instead of partial fractions?” than questions like, “How do I do this problem?” My role is to stoke your intellectual curiosity and give you opportunities to learn how to apply what we’re doing in class to new problems. But you might find that a classmate is willing to walk you through a problem if you’re really stumped. Take this as a reminder to identify the resources you have (me, your book, a tutor, other students, … ) and find out how to use them most effectively.
The very last thing you should know about office hours is that I really like math, and I really like talking to you about math, so it’s hard to imagine a better way to spend a couple hours in the afternoon. If you can make the regularly scheduled office hours, that’s ideal: I’ve set that time aside for students, not for other parts of my job. When I’m not holding office hours, I’m working on those other tasks: research, class preparation or grading, or the kind of stuff that keeps the college chugging along (like serving on committees). Please don’t take it personally if you drop in outside of office hours and I have to turn you away! I’d much rather talk to you about math, but I can’t neglect my other duties, either.
Hope to see you in office hours soon!