I just received the most courteous email from a student who showed up for my office hours today, only to find me absent. She ended with a respectful request that I respond to her email.
LD3C is on spring break this week.
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That cracks me up!
ReplyDeleteAt least the little pea-brain didn't immediately trudge over to the Dean's office to complain...but would anyone have been there?
ReplyDeleteI once had a student do that during winter break. Although, he was anything but respectful. He was downright insulted that it took me until Wednesday to respond to his Tuesday email. Mad as heck that my office phone only had 5 digits listed in the campus directory (never mind the whole thing area code and all was on his syllabus). He wrote a nasty email to our department admin assistant complaining about my refusal to respond to him and the school's conspiracy to sequester my phone number. He trudged to the chair's office to complain about the grading of one assigment which was worth less than one-tenth of a percent of his final grade.
ReplyDeleteYou are one lucky woman, Greta! I feel warm and comforted inside.
@CMP: Your student sounds like the one at whom I finally hauled off and wrote on his paper, "GET A GIRLFRIEND, or ANYTHING to take the inappropriate edge off your personality." But of course, I have tenure.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, but there's a sketch on the old "Dave Allen At Large" TV series depicting a doddering old conductor doing this, by coming to the concert hall and discovering his orchestra isn't there, because he has the date wrong. Jeez Louise, most students don't need to be TOLD not to come to class!
But then, the odd silly behavior or clumsiness of an 18-to-22-year-old isn't evidence of the imminent downfall of Western Civilization... but of course, there's no shortage of posts showing that, e.g. how so many college courses are taught at 7th-grade level, because that's all the "customers" in our students will stand for, and more to the point, that's all they can do.
I wonder, though -- is it a given that instructors don't observe their regular office hours at your institution during Reading Week?
ReplyDeleteMy school is primarily a commuter one, and most faculty do their personal work primarily at home, not on campus. But, given that the libraries are open regular hours and pretty full of students, most campus services are running as usual, and all support staff are required to work throughout our Reading Week, I wouldn't be entirely surprised at a student assuming professors might be available as well. (I always mentions to me students that I won't be holding my regular office hour, but I have seen students 'by appointment' during that period.)
Spring Break is a totally different phenomenon than Reading Week at most colleges. All classes are canceled, the library is open with a skeleton crew with minimal hours, and the department offices also close early. We even close the entire college the last four days of the week so everyone gets some time off. I'm shocked a student actually showed up during this time. Most of them are off to the beach or Mexico or skiing if they can afford it or competing with the hoards of tourists who come down here for our local attractions due to our warm weather.
ReplyDelete@English Doc: Hoards? My wife tells her students to not rely on Spell Check because it may not catch contextual errors and let the homonyms for words like "hordes" to slip past.
ReplyDelete@EnglishDoc - I didn't realize US universities were different in this respect. Do you folks get a 'spring break' week off *in addition* to a reading week, or in place of one? (I could certainly use an obligation-free holiday week right about now.)
ReplyDelete@Gary: My proffie tells me to ensure that "and" constructions are parallel because readers may not understand your sentence and derive an opposite meaning from the one you intended.
ReplyDelete@Gary: or perhaps English Doc's local Chamber of Commerce has, in fact, been corralling tourists somewhere, saving them up for future use/exploitation? Goodness knows I wouldn't want any extras (we've got plenty here already), but businesspeople seem very fond of tourists, perhaps even to the point of hoarding (and then, presumably letting them loose at the appropriate moment -- sort of catch and release).
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