[wdutch]

It's funny how "working the system" has connotations of foul play but if you're talking about software or a machine and you say "I don't know how to work it" you're saying that you don't know how to make it do it's expected function (at least in my dialect of English).

It's great that you overcame your initial difficulty. Personally, as a state-schooled white male I never did get comfortable using office hours while I was at university like other people in the comments have mentioned.

Some of the students mentioned in the article have it far worse than I did because they don't even know the meaning of the term "office hours". They can't use the system as it's expected to be used because they don't even know there's a system. Perhaps they don't even think to look for a system because they're accustomed to systems being stacked against them and they have no conception of a system that's there to help them.