There are students who never go to their professors’ office hours or only drop in before exams or after getting marks back. 

And then there’s Arnav Mahajan. 

He was an office hours regular – he’d show up at the start of the term to introduce himself and then return week after week with a head full of questions. 

“Most of my questions were off-topic. The more passionate a professor or postdoc was about the subject they taught in class, the more questions I had. But I didn’t want to interrupt their lectures so I’d save the questions for office hours.” 

Mahajan realized early on he was somewhere special – a campus full of brilliant minds and open doors. He’d walk through as many as he could to strike up conversations with faculty who made time to share their knowledge with curious students. 

His favourite conversations happened in the Psychology Building. It’s why he went into Psychology, Neuroscience & Behavior in his second year. 

The building’s lobby became his third space – it’s where he spent countless hours studying, socializing and working on group projects. Mahajan joined the McMaster PNB Society as VP Leadership, running the mentorship program and recruiting students to serve as PNB ambassadors. 

He also became a teaching assistant for Intro Psych – it ranked as one of his favourite undergrad courses thanks to the content and instructors Joe Kim and Michelle Cadieux. 

Kim likes to interview prospective TAs while walking around campus. Their walk was cut short by rain so they went inside the Institute for Applied Health Science to grab a coffee. 

But Mahajan doesn’t drink coffee and proceeded to tell Joe why: He did an experiment in school that drove home the health impacts of drinking caffeine. He started off by taking his blood pressure and announcing the results to the class. He then took out a jumbo-sized thermos full of black coffee, brewed that morning, drank it all in one go and retook his blood pressure to show how how fast it had spiked from the caffeine. 

“I told all of this to Joe during my interview. I was pretty sure I’d blown my chance at getting the job.” 

But Kim appreciated Mahajan’s energy and enthusiasm and hired him for one of the 40 TA spots. And at the start of the winter term, Mahajan was offered one of the co-head TA positions. He was now responsible for leading tutorial operations and team coordination for one of Mac’s largest undergrad classes. 

He jokes that’s he’s routinely tapped for leadership roles because he’s usually the loudest and tallest person in any room – he’s 6’4”. He reluctantly admits that he also has a knack for bringing people together, staying positive and getting everyone pulling in the same direction. 

Being a TA gave Mahajan an even greater appreciation for the first-year course and what Joe and Michelle were doing at the front of the class and behind the scenes. “Every lecture, tutorial and demo is intentionally designed to maximize student learning. All of these little things add up to an awesome environment for students. And it’s all grounded in research.” 

Mahajan recently went to a reunion dinner with head TAs from as far back as year one of the course – they keep in touch with Kim and Cadieux. “It was so inspiring seeing the lineage – former TAs who are now lawyers, doctors and professors with remarkable careers. They remain part of this tight knit community who got to work with Joe and Michelle in building the program and then passing it on.” 

Conversations continue

Along with Intro Psych, Bruce Milliken’s third-year course on memory stood out for Mahajan. So he asked if Milliken could be his fourth-year research thesis supervisor. Along with making time for weekly conversations, Milliken invited Mahajan to join lab meetings. “I got to soak up all this incredible wisdom.” 

Those conversations and meetings were so interesting that Mahajan postponed plans for medical school. He’s staying on as a graduate student, doing research in attention, memory, and perception. 

So the conversations will continue on campus and off-topic questions will keep filling Mahajan’s head for the next two years.