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by honie
1755 days ago
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Maybe it was a different time and/or environment, but that couldn't be furthered from the truth according to my experience — even if I read that as a metaphorical door. Many of the people I have worked for/with who are amazing in objectively measurable ways, including fame, appear to balance their open- and closed- door times well. If you're just chasing after fame and want to work on what "everyone" thinks is important, then I don't disagree that keeping your door opened and getting "all kinds of interruptions" is likely the way to go. Also anecdotally, the "forever-open-door" people I have worked with who are always talking about "important problems" to solve; have huge networks; and are hopping from collaboration to collaboration working on a completely different domain of expertise every other year: they seem important to the community but, often on closer inspection, they don't actually produce much that is of substance. Edit: added "I don't disagree" for clarity. |
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If office hours was an hour long, students come and go for an hour with questions plus some overtime duration of extra clarifications. If office hours was four hours long, students come and go for four hours plus the same bit of overtime. With no bookend between office hours and everything else, students would beg for one more question and push the boundaries of the open-door policy.
In their eyes, the instructor who slams the door in the student's face because, "It's two o'clock, I need to work," is impolite and insensitive.
Putting an unavoidable, important meeting at the end of office hours suddenly put the burden of being impolite on the students. Suddenly, office hours became more efficient and students, more punctual. The professor was no longer so unbelievable cruel for ending the open-door session (gasp) on time. And, most importantly, research could get done at a normal hour.