College professors are there to guide you and teach you throughout your course of study. This is true whether you are involved in an undergraduate or graduate program. If you are having problems with a particular class, one of the first places that you should seek help is from your professor. In this article you will find advice on how you can go about approaching your professor for help. It will also detail out what you should do when you actually meet with him or her.
How to Approach Your Professor
Contact Most professors can be contacted in a couple of different ways. Professors tend to have office hours set up at least once or twice a week. This is a time for students to come by and speak with them if they need help, guidance, or assistance. You can usually find this information on the course syllabus. If you cannot make it to your professor's office hours or you miss their office hours you can also check the syllabus for alternative methods of contact, such as a phone number or email address.
Prepare for Your Meeting
Once you have scheduled a meeting with your professor, prepare for your meeting ahead of time. Be prepared, so that you can get straight to the point when you arrive and get all of your questions answered before you leave. Especially if you are meeting with your professor during office hours there will be a short timeframe for you to get help because other students will be waiting to see him or her. Also professors are very busy teaching classes, conducting research, etc., so their office hours do not tend to be that long.
Questions Prepare a list of questions to take to your meeting with you. This will keep you focused and on track and won't allow you to forget anything. If you are efficient you should be able to accomplish everything in one meeting, rather than having to keep coming back with further questions.
Supporting Materials Bring anything with you that is class-related and/or related to your questions or concerns. If you need to refer to a textbook, mark the pages so that you can turn to them quickly.
Come Prepared Bring something to write with and write on to the meeting with you. Your professors may provide you with the information that you need and you will want to write it down, so you don't forget. Also you may want to refer back to these notes as a record of your meeting.
At the Meeting
Be On Time Show up for you meeting with your professor a few minutes ahead of the scheduled time. You may have to wait for a few minutes but it is better that you have to wait than to keep your professor waiting. If you need to cancel or reschedule your meeting, be sure you call your professor and give them advance notice.
Be Respectful Address your professor by his or her title and last name. Tell him or her your reason for requesting the meeting and ask him/her for help, advice, etc. Listen very politely to everything that your professor has to say. Don't interrupt or get argumentative.
Express Gratitude Be sure to thank your professor for their time when your meeting is over. If you need to schedule another appointment then try to do so at this time.
A user on one of these Question and Answer web sites can submit a ?question? on a particular subject and other users of the Question and Answer web site can provide answers to it and the answers can be voted on (and then sorted by) relevance (more votes meaning more relevance). All of the responses are available to view online.
These Question and Answer web sites can generate you great amounts of traffic if you can answer questions in your area of expertise (it goes without saying that you need to ensure that your answering Questions that are related to your particular niche on the Internet).
Yahoo have a Question and Answer website that offers a complete question and answer service and it's very helpful to get your name out there and on peoples lips.
You must certainly be careful about what you post. Don't assume you can just post a URL and get masses of traffic, you will find your ?answer? voted down or even removed if you do this.
As I have mentioned a number times, providing relevant content and great quality will be far more valuable. Actually answering the question and helping people out will show you to be an ?expert? in your market in no time at all.
The rules generally specify no "soliciting", so answer the question and help someone out, with a detailed answer and then add a reference to your website for people to follow up for more information.
The other great reason to use Question and Answer sites (particularly Yahoo given that Google is not accepting new questions and answers) is that lots of websites syndicate the questions and answers for content on their website.
As a result better google rankings happen.
As I mentioned earlier, Questions and Answers can also appear in search engine results. Of course the other benefit is that users of the question and answer sites themselves will get to your website from reading your responses.
Personally in my experience I treat the answering of questions as building up a presence on the Internet rather than a source of huge traffic to my websites, however it is certainly something that should not be ignored.
With that said, I believe it can be a great ?return on investment? where for a relatively small investment of time (to answer questions) you can get a steady stream of traffic to your web site.
Both Kristie Lorette & Michael Silverton are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Kristie Lorette has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education Toys, Education and Education Toys. Review more industry related articles by Kristie Lorette at CareersandEducation.com. Kristie Lorette is a CareersandEducation.com feature writer that often covers topics relating to. Kristie Lorette's top article generates over 3600 views. to your Favourites.
Michael Silverton has sinced written about articles on various topics from Education Toys, Website Traffic and RSS. We suggest that you use question and answer web sites. Why? Well So drop by today to find out how to apply t. Michael Silverton's top article generates over 2900 views. to your Favourites.