<p>When would you say it is appropriate to go to the Professor's office hours rather than the GSI's office hours, or is there no difference?</p>
<p>For me, it’s basically:</p>
<p>Stupid questions / simple misunderstandings = GSI office hours
Good questions / in-depth = professor office hours</p>
<p>Basically, I ask the question: is it likely to confuse the GSI? If yes, it goes into professor’s office hours.</p>
<p>Eg. if you’re learning about Taylor series in MATH1B, questions about the Laurent series go towards the professor, whereas if your solutions for the odd-numbered questions don’t match the back of the book, that’s more GSI. Sure, the GSI is also qualified to answer stuff about the Laurent series, but the professor can probably phrase it better.</p>
<p>imo for undergrad math and physics, there probably is no difference. if you’re good enough to get into berkeley as a grad student, you’ve probably mastered all the undergrad stuff and can explain it really well. this was my experience in math 1a/1b and physics 8a/8b. all the GSIs are rock stars and know everything. </p>
<p>for a subject like biology, you’ll find GSIs who really have no idea what they’re talking about sometimes, so for biology definitely go to office hours of the professor.</p>
<p>Are there office hours, where it is more like a one on one thing? People say to go to office hours to get to know the professor better (and in the case, you need a letter of rec or something), but from what i’ve experienced, you can’t really get to know the prof.</p>
<p>Right. If you have trouble understanding a simple/fundamental concept, ask the GSI, because they’ll be able to explain it for sure and you won’t have to embarrass yourself in front of the professor.
If you have a way-out-there or weird-case-scenario question, the professor is more qualified to answer. Make sure it’s a well-thought out scenario that shows you’ve been thinking about or struggling with several concepts in class, not just some random dumb and/or trivial question you’re asking just for the sake of asking something. </p>
<p>Don’t go to the professor’s office hours and ask a question that could easily be answered by reading the textbook. It’s annoying and wastes everyone’s time. Ex. Don’t go to ochem office hours and ask the prof to just draw out a simple mechanism he already drew for you on the board yesterday… I’ve noticed this happen before. It should already be in your notes! </p>
<p>If you want one-on-one time with a professor, it’s best to schedule an individual appointment with him/her since multiple people always show up to OH with actual course content questions. I think of OH as more of a group learning experience for outside-lecture knowledge reinforcement/enrichment.</p>
<p>For Chem 3AL/3BL, that is one case where you should go to the GSI before the professor in all cases.</p>
<p>For Bio 1A-B, the GSIs come from a wide range of sub-disciplines, so some GSIs are more useful for some modules than others (i.e. for Bio 1B, if you have a GSI from an IB/PMB plant lab they will probably be useful for plants but not as much for evolution or ecology)</p>
<p>haha applejuice i like how you said " and you won’t have to embarrass yourself in front of the professor." I go to a tutor for one of my classes and the one that’s really helpful wasn’t there so i went to another one and it was so embarrassing because he kept asking me things that i didn’t know. : / luckily I had to leave in 30 mins! the other one actually explains the concept though.</p>