Working with me

Come to office hours

Office hours are the part of the job I like most, and they are almost always empty, so you will have my full attention. You do not need a reason, a prepared question, or a problem serious enough to justify the visit. Students who come by to talk about something they read, or about what to do after graduation, or about whether a major is the right one, are using office hours exactly as intended.

My office is Room O134. If the posted times do not work with your schedule, email me and we will find another time.

If you are thinking about research

I take undergraduate research seriously, and I would rather work with a student who is curious and unpracticed than with one who already knows the vocabulary. Most of my projects have parts that an undergraduate can genuinely own, particularly the document work. The federal sentencing study I am designing involves reading court filings and coding how planning is described in them, which is real research training and does not require statistics to start.

If you want to get involved, the useful first step is to come to office hours and tell me what you find interesting, even if you cannot yet say why. We can work out from there whether one of my projects fits or whether the better move is to help you build your own.

Letters of recommendation

I am glad to write letters, and a good letter takes time to write well. Two things make it possible for me to write a strong one rather than a generic one.

Ask at least three weeks before the earliest deadline. Then send me, in a single email, the list of programs or positions with their deadlines and submission methods, your CV or resume, a short note about what you want the letter to emphasize, and a reminder of which courses you took with me and roughly when. If you wrote something in one of my classes that you were proud of, send that too.

If I do not think I can write you a strong letter, I will tell you directly and quickly, so that you can ask someone better positioned rather than finding out from the outcome.

A note on generative AI

My course policies are specific about where AI tools are permitted and where they are not, and they vary by assignment, so read the policy in the syllabus rather than assuming. The underlying reason is not suspicion. It is that the skills these courses build, which are reading an argument closely, deciding what evidence would settle a question, and writing a claim you can defend, are built by doing them. Outsourcing the doing forfeits the building.