I advocate heavily for the idea of developing a relationship with your professor early in the semester.
I can’t stress how much this relationship with your professor is going to help you increase your grade.
It’s going to help you know how to advocate for yourself, it’s going to help you learn how to utilize the resources that are around you and learn how to consistently improve throughout the semester and take your weaknesses from being weaknesses to being strengths.
Download the Scripts To Use To Have Helpful Conversations With Your Professor Below:
Students have this perception of their professors, that they’re there to cause them to fail. They believe they don’t care about them, that they’re just there for a paycheck.
While there are always exceptions, I find that a majority of the time, professors actually go into the field because they enjoy the field that they’re studying; they enjoy teaching others about the topic, and they truly do want you to succeed.
However, every student needs to put in their part. If you show up willing to learn, if you show up with a teachable attitude, then you’re going to have a great relationship with your professor because they’re going to want to help you; they’re going to want to pour into; they’re going to want to help shape your mind around that topic.
But if you go into your academic program with an attitude of, “I don’t want to be here,” an attitude of, “This professor sucks,” an attitude of, “I just want you to tell me the answers so I can pass the test,” you’re going to miss out on an incredible opportunity to meet someone who can pour into you not only in that academic field, but in life in general.
Your professors are or should be your number one resource; the number one person that you should be in contact with when it comes to your academic success.
The first reason you should be meeting with your professor is to establish and find out from them what it takes to succeed in their class.
I always teach the girls that I work with one-on-one, that the very first week of classes, they should be going and introducing themselves to their professors. Most professors have been professors for many years. They’ve seen students excel in their classes and they’ve seen students absolutely flunk out.
They know what successful students do to succeed. Successful students tend to have really good relationships with their professors, and professors care about what these students are doing because they want to be able to communicate to other students who are struggling what successful students have done in the past.
So, the first reason that you should be meeting with your professor is to establish what it’s going to take to succeed in their class, what their expectations are, when their office hours are, how often you can meet with them, what you can do to make sure that you see success in that class.
The second reason or the second point in your semester that you should be meeting with your professor is after the first exam.
In my experience, students tend to get the lowest grade on the first exam of the semester, because they don’t know what to expect yet. They don’t know what the questions are going to be like, they don’t really know what the professor considers to be important or not important. They don’t know how the professor is going to pull the information. They’re not sure yet if there’s going to be more of an emphasis on lecture content or textbook content.
So, after that first exam, you should be meeting with your professor to go over the exam in depth with them.
You want to talk to them about what you did to prepare for the exam, and you want to go over the exam questions with them. Particularly the ones in which you got the answers incorrect so that together, you guys can come up with a strategy to apply towards your second exam.
Your professor’s going to give you great feedback, number one because you’re telling them what you did to prepare, but also, because they know what to expect because they’re the ones writing the exam.
They can tell you what to focus on when they’re talking and lecture. They can tell you what to focus on when you’re reading. They can tell you want to focus on when you’re studying on your own, and they can give recommendations of extra resources that you can take advantage of, either on campus or online.
The third point or reason you should be meeting with your professor is right after midterms.
Midterms are the midpoint of the semester. At this point, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect on your exams. You have an idea where you stand with your grades, and it’s your last opportunity to change things if you’re going for a higher grade or if you’re trying to put yourself over that pass-fail line.
So, at this point, it is crucial for you to go and talk to your professor to see what assignments you have left, what kind of grades you need to get on those assignments, and so you can talk about what to do to make sure that you actually pass the class.
If you show initiative, if you show that you care about your grade, if you show that you care about your academic success, your professor’s going to reciprocate that.
Every time you chat with them, it’s an opportunity for you to improve on whatever it is that you’re struggling with. It’s an opportunity for you to get feedback, it’s an opportunity for you to get help to change the situation.
You pay a lot of money to college, and you don’t want to waste it. You don’t want to take out student loans and at the end of four years, not have a degree to go along with it. You don’t want to put yourself through all that stress just to fail.
Download the Scripts To Use To Have Helpful Conversations With Your Professor Below:
The fourth point that you should meet with your professor is any time that you’re going to be writing a paper.
Your professor is the person that was going to be grading your paper based off of a rubric. They can give you valuable feedback that will help you get higher grades on your papers while saving you a lot of stress.
Have them give you some guidance on the process of writing the paper.
Now, does this take planning? Yes. Does this require for you to not write the paper before it’s due, the night before it’s due? Yes.
It’s going to take some planning on your part. It’s going to require you to stop procrastinating and do the work, but one of the nice things about office hours and about scheduling these types of meetings with your professor is that it holds you accountable.
So, if you say that you’re going to show up during the office hours, it forces you to get whatever you need to get done so that you have something to show the professor. It forces you to do the work so that you guys have something to talk about so that you don’t show up to the professor looking like an idiot who doesn’t do the work. They will respect you for that and they will help you, and you’ll be able to get a higher grade on the exam.
The fifth point that you should meet with your professor is right before finals.
Again, this goes along with what I talked about during midterms. If you’re trying to bump from a C to a C+, or a C+ to a B-, right before finals is a great time to talk to your professor to see what you can do to try to bring your grade up before the final exam or before that big final paper.
This is a great opportunity for you to give yourself that extra grade boost because you’re talking to the person who’s going to help you strategize and how to increase your grade. It’s especially helpful if your final grade is a project or a paper because you’re going to get feedback on what you can do to make sure that it’s a really good paper, that it’s a really good project or a really good presentation.
It’s also helpful if your final exam is not cumulative because then you can change and tweak things on that final exam to help boost your grade.
The sixth reason you should meet with your professor is just to show up for yourself.
It’s so that you can prove to yourself that the reason why you’re not seeing the kind of success that you want in college has nothing to do with your IQ level, it has nothing to do whether or not you’re smart or dumb or brilliant or whatever, it’s all about helping yourself.
It’s all about developing the skills.
It’s all about utilizing all of the resources that are around you. It’s about making sure you’re really grabbing your education by the horns. You’re controlling it, you’re trying to get the most out of it.
College should really be about you becoming the student that you envisioned when you enrolled in college.
That’s the reason why you should be meeting with your professor, so that you can get everything out of your education so that you can learn how to build relationships, so that you can learn how to network, so that you can learn how to advocate for yourself and advocate for your education and advocate for the things that you need.