Second question. All professors have office hours. Just, go. Come with a few higher level questions (not, how do I solve this problem, but rather, tell me more about the interesting field of XYZ).

Honestly, that’s pretty much it. As you move through your Harvard career, you’ll realize that a lot of professors are really accessible. I wrote an email about a project proposal to a big name in the Psych department, got a response, set up a meeting etc.

Regarding Mankiw, I did indeed take Ec 10. He has a lot of office hours and is an interesting chap. He once invited a few students to his house for Thanksgiving via a lottery system.

Also, there’s this great tradition of student-faculty? faculty-student? dinners. Where students invite professors to go have a really nice dinner with them, c/o HUDS. Generally, if it’s a big name, it’s probably a good idea to get a bunch of students together to invite someone. It looks sort of funny when you have one person hogging a big wig for an entire dinner.

And kind of on a tangent–it’ll be great if sometime in the future you could post about how to approach and get to know a professor. You write a lot about Mankiw. Have you taken his class? How do you begin to approach such a big-name professor like him?

Thanks again!