I Believe in Office Hours

 So on the last day of class before Thanksgiving break, my materials science (structure and defects) professor announced that if we wanted to know our current status in his class that all we had to do was email him. Immediately I thought oh my goodness this is going to be a can of worms or even worse the mother of all messes. Now I tried to think optimistic, but it takes 8 people including myself to accomplish his weekly homework. In addition, I did not to as well as I would like to on the tests for this class. On the second test, two people in the class received 100's and one person received a 102..There were 3 bonus questions on the test. Nevertheless, I was dreading emailing him all break about asking my status in his class. I would always get nervous about emailing a teacher because you never know how they are going to take an email. What you may consider sincere may feel like a hate crime to them. Yet I finally put all my anxious feelings aside and sent him the email on Wednesday.
 I finally received a response from my professor Monday afternoon and to my surprise I wasn't doing as horribly as I thought. My professor mentioned that I have a pleasant demeanor and that he has noticed me in office hours. I was excited just to know that he has noticed me in office hours. In addition, he stated that my current grade is in the C+ range. I did a large fist pump to the air once I read this comment and I almost fell out of my chair when I read that he would raise my grade 1/3 a letter grade if I improved significantly on the final exam. I called my mother because I couldn't believe the news I had read. Even now, I still can't believe that those very words actually formed and came out of my professor's mouth. I've heard stories about how students have been able to get their grades raised after solely talking to a teacher. I myself thought this is only a thing that happens to kids in the college where pleading with the professor can raise the grade on a paper. Whereas in engineering school, you can't talk your way as to why you put that the vertical asymptote was -1 instead of from the positive side it approaches negative infinity.
  All in all, office hours are not as dreadful as they seem. It does take time getting used to, but having one of my goals to attend office hours really made a difference. It may not make a large difference like it has for this class. Nevertheless, I do believe in office hours as a necessity for academic achievement.