Talk to Your Instructors!

This may be the academic resource that is most overlooked by students:  Talking to your instructors during their office hours.  The purpose of office hours is to provide time for students to meet individually with instructors.  This gives you a chance to ask questions that you may not be able to ask in class, shows your instructors that you care about doing well in their classes, and allows them to get to know you better. (Remember that you may want to ask them to be references for you when you are job-hunting.)  Talking with them on a one-to-one basis also lets you get to know them better, and may show you a side of them that is not apparent in class.  Keep in mind that, in class, instructors have a certain amount of material that they need to cover every day; they have to deal with a lot of students who are at many different levels of academic ability; and they sometimes have to prevent or handle inappropriate behavior from students.  When students do see their instructors during office hours, they almost always report that this was very helpful.