[...] How to Ask your Professors for Help—Four tips on how NOT to annoy your professors when asking for help. This entry was written by Jennika Smith, posted on August 11, 2011. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment. Posted in: Articles.Read more about: student success tips, support articles. [...]

[...] How to Ask your Professors for Help—Four tips on how NOT to annoy your professors when asking for help. [...]

[...] Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Four Ways to Annoy a Professor When Asking For Help (And Four Things … calnewport.com/blog/2008/10/14/four-ways-to-annoy-a-professor-when-asking-for-help-and-four-things-you-should-do-instead – view page – cached Four Ways to Annoy a Professor When Asking For Help (And Four Things You Should Do Instead) — From the page [...]

[class participation] was HUGELY helpful, though, in establishing feedback to the professor; often if one person doesn’t get something, he’s not alone, and the prof can adjust to the situation as warranted.

Great insight.

We “burn the midnight oil” because we love what we do (I’m thinking research-oriented environments) – you’ll likely develop the habit by the time you defend your thesis

“We” is too broad. In the math/theory community, burning the midnight oil on a regular basis doesn’t help, and here at MIT, few do it in this group. At the same time, of course, other research areas do lots of late night work. Head up a few floors to find the systems guys (who build and program things), and you’ll see that almost every graduate student office has a couch, pillow, and blanket in it. This just depends on what area of research you’re in.

I don’t really have a 100% final exam. But the final exam does carry the most weightage. And my questions are in the form of hypothetical scenarios.

So, are you suggesting that I churn out the questions on my own? Should I churn out this questions on a per-topic basis or come up with questions comprising a range of topics? Or both?

My advice would be to drop the case-copying because it’s only really tangentially useful. Instead:

1. Figure out what causes of action a potential client could have
2. List out what steps they need to prove for each cause of action (also helps to have a list of things that the other side would have to prove to kill it) – do this by distilling principles from the judgments and weighting their relative authority
3. Slot in the relevant details from the cases (which will usually illustrate how to satisfy/not satisfy each step although some cases also illustrate historical or theoretical points)
4. Compare the problem with this outline.

Steps 1 and 2 will basically yield you a list of questions (is there a duty of care, has it been breached, etc), and step 3 will give you a list of possible answers and why you might choose to argue that answer in a given situation. It’s basically what Cal said, but structure is going to be even more important, because you need to know the details (because these will decide your case) but also the big picture (so you know what to argue in the first place, what to try if it doesn’t work, how to arrange it persuasively). Also, never follow the structure of a casebook because they tend to present things in terms of historical/theoretical development and in multi-page chunks of case which is great for intellectual development but terrible for exam notes.

I totally agree that it’s useful information! I don’t think Dartmouth students are exempt from needing to communicate more effectively with professors, either. I’m certainly not- I went to a lunch and talk about just this topic during orientation. I also totally appreciate how it can be intimidating to get to know professors.

What I was saying was that I wondered if the demographic that reads Study Hacks would derive maximum benefit from the tip, but it looks as though I’m wrong! =)

More on Tao #3 and 4: I found that cramming just didn’t work in the long run — invariably I would need to leverage on what I was supposed to have learned, not just put into short-term memory. So for both the math-oriented material and learning a foreign language, a very effective way to improve one’s grade is to study, study, study essentially daily, not in large gulps every few days; this has the additional if helping you identify during a class session where you are having, or think you soon will have, a problem. Study to understand the material, and the grade will follow.

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You wrote “If the organization-level of the professors I know here at MIT are any indicator of their study habits, I too would advice [sic] a student to seek such tactical help elsewhere…” What do they have to do with each other?!? There might be some seriously cool stuff brewing that needs those seeming organizational non-linearities.

We “burn the midnight oil” because we love what we do (I’m thinking research-oriented environments) – you’ll likely develop the habit by the time you defend your thesis; if you don’t, then don’t even consider an academic career.

Keep up your good work, here and there!

As a grad student, doesn’t this pressure frighten you somewhat? I mean, coming from MIT, you’d probably get tenure in a lot of places, but what if you were especially interested in getting tenure at MIT?

I would have to prepare myself to be disappointed. Here’s the thing, MIT rarely hires their own students. They prefer to wait until people become famous, then hire them. The best way, therefore, to get tenure at MIT is to go get famous. Therein lies the super hard part.

I know if I were in a situation like that, I’d probably conclude that (doing more work) = (better results)

That’s not the culture in the Theory Group here at MIT. Working long hours signals you’re a hard worker. Who cares? The standard everyone idealizes here is the Good Will Hunting type that walks in late, solves an unsolved proof, then gets lunch. Of course, outside of one exception, no one actually can do that. But at the same time, no one feels like burning the midnight oil will somehow produce better insights.