The one trick to get better grades that almost NOBODY does!

Another big tip that I have for you that I barely, if not ever, see any of my classmates do is attend office hours, especially for academic courses like the math and sciences. In my opinion, that is such a huge waste of resources!

ATTEND TA OFFICE HOURS THAT ARE AVAILABLE TO YOU AND BECOME BFFS (not really but you get the point) WITH YOUR TA!

For example, If you have a class that is held in a lecture hall (for example all our math classes), chances are you will have some kind of math workshop associated with it. For our math 150/151, 152, 251 classes it's the pure calculus workshop. Attend those if you have trouble understanding any related concepts or questions with your assignments or practice problems. Trust me, your TA can solve whatever you and your friends were struggling with for three hours in five minutes and guide you to the answer in fifteen. Your TAs are also the people who mark your quizzes and assignments so they know what the professors want when they mark your homework. Plus, if you attend a grad student’s office hours consistently and get to know them, they can go out of their way to do nice things for you, in my experience, that (putting this disclaimer out there for Molly and the TAs marking this) don’t involve academic dishonesty or conflict of interest. Another big benefit to attending office hours is that it’s a better alternative to approaching your professors after classes and having to wait in a long lineup of other people. I also think that the TA I go to explains calculus concepts better than my professor... but don't tell anyone 👀. In my opinion I’ve gained a lot by attending office hours and learned how to approach my calculus, physics and linear algebra problems differently! So take full advantage of office hours whenever you can, the TAs are being paid to help you and they will gladly do so!