Office Hours
Winter 2025
I'm happy to see you! I'll be doing office hours in one of the available computer labs on the third floor of Olin.
There are two different kinds of office hours scheduled: "Open office hours," and "Personal office meetings." "Open office hours" is the default, and is an open session that anyone can attend. Feel free to join in to a conversation if what we're talking about concerns you as well. "Personal office meetings" are designed for one-on-one discussions of a more personal nature. I'm happy to provide general help during these times as well if I can, but I'll give first priority for personal matters during those times.
Occasionally, meetings pop up for which I need to move, shorten, or cancel my office hours, and so the Google calendar linked below has a more accurate representation of what my office hours actually are. The hours above are a guideline; the hours below are what is actually going on for a given week.
You can visit the calendar in a web page to see what it looks like.
You can find the calendar directly within Google calendar, which integrates with the rest of your Google calendar. My calendar is called "Musicant shared office hours."
Feel free to look for other students in the class while working in the labs. Be friendly and help each other out. Office hours are also a time when you can work with other students in the class spontaneously for helping each other.
You can also contact me directly by email if you are unable to make office hours, and we can schedule an appointment. Make sure to do so at least 24 hours in advance, and list times that you are available between 8am and 5pm. If you're taking CS 251, remember that there is also a prefect and lab assistants who are also happy to help. Information on contacting them is on our Moodle site. You can also post questions to our course Q&A forum, and get help from others in the class.
How to prepare
In general, you don't need to prepare for student hours at all. Feel free to stop by to talk or to bring whatever questions you have. Office hours are hopefully a collaborative session where you can work with me and also with other students in helping to solve whatever problems you're working on.
That said, it can nonetheless be super helpful if you are prepared and ready to go with whatever question you have. If you will be showing me code on a laptop, please have it ready to go when you come in. I find it much easier to help students out when working on a larger monitor or screen, so if you're bringing a laptop we'll plug it into an external display so we can both look at it.
If you'll be coming to me for help on debugging code for a class you're taking with me, I'll likely ask you what you've already tried. So in this case, at least be ready to tell me what you've already tried to do to help understand the bug that you're facing.