I felt similarly wrt office hours. I never understood what I was supposed to do with office hours, and felt like an idiot when I tried used them.

My slightly younger cousins went to fancy private schools growing up, and were sort of trained how to work the system. They are still in communication with multiple professors 20 years later.

>> trained how to work the system

Seeking help or advice is not "working the system", it's normal. I was not programmed with this understanding either, and it can take time to adjust once you see it. Life gets easier when you stop thinking you need to face it alone.

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.

I agree. Professional life is much easier in this regard. I don't mean "working the system" is a negative -- you need to be aware of and able to work effectively in your environment.

Our training in K-12 in my experience was that most academic collaboration was cheating. It's difficult to unlearn that. My kids go to a private school, it's very different -- they are intensely collaborative in elementary school.

Another biased way of seeing your professors is usually as indisputable authority figures. It's even harder to not fall for that as a lot of high performing academics paint themselves like that when teaching, which is ironic given that they usually underperform at the latter because of how they stand in that position of authority.

I went to an okish school but my house and school were very authoritarian environments that constrained creativity. It took me a while to overcome that bias.

I wonder how much of this is culturally specific. I went in the same middle and high schools as my classmates (none American nor in the US), yet our behaviors towards teachers couldn't have been more different.

Public schools in the US and most religious upbringings (not all) teach blind submission and deference to authority. Students who question things too much are deemed troublemakers obstructing the teacher's valuable dictation time. Repeated offenders are referred to a psychiatrist for a ADHD referral and subsequent drugging and parents who object get a DCS referral and their kids rehomed in foster care where they are often then subjected to physical and sexual abuse.

It's not surprising that such disadvantaged (public school) students would so be in awe of what they perceive as the unquestionable authority of professors that they would not ask questions as that is what our public school systems (most not all) train students to do - remain silent and memorize the words of wisdom being imparted to you. There will be a test.

> Public schools in the US and most religious upbringings

I would say the school system in general does that. The whole point of the school system is to turn you into a predictable automaton of economic utility. You want to be creative? Do that in your own time or pray you can control your creativity enough to only release it during the designated classes.

Yes, absolutely. John T. Gatto, John C. Holt, and Alfie Kohn all have very interesting commentary on this issue which is worth the time to engage with and ponder.