My name is X, I'm a sophomore/ Junior Transfer from [questionable county college]. I'm behind a semester and would like to receive some guidance,to make sure I'm heading in the right direction. If you could respond to this email to set up an appointment it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to contact me via phone as well [number follows]
Regards
X
My reply:
Hi,
I have office hours on [these four days]. Can you find time then? Let me know when you might be able to drop by my office.
His reply:
im in class everytime your in your office is there anyway we can set up a meeting outside that time?
Thanks
X
My reply:
What's your schedule on Mondays?
His reply:
free after 430
My reply (after checking his current schedule):
What about 10:45 on MW? After your [History of Hamsters] class?
His reply:
That works are you available now?
My reply:
No; sorry. Let’s meet Monday please after your class.
My message today (twenty minutes after he didn’t show):
Did you get my reply setting up an appointment today at 10:45?
His reply [moments ago]:
urgh.... I forgot all about it had a crazy weekend ! is there a time we can reschedule
The start of my reply:
Regular academic advising begins in October….
I can't find it online, but there was an old RYS graphic that showed someone about to chomp down on a miniature student and the tag line was something like: Why do we love students? Because they're so much fun to eat! If anyone finds it, please post it!
ReplyDeleteStudents need to be well-done or overdone in a heavy garlic sauce. Anything to cover that nasty beery flavor.
DeleteGood for the Tuba Playing Prof. This kid needs to know that when one acts like an irresponsible child by "forgetting about" a special favor, one will lose one's privileges and be treated as an irresponsible child.
No doubt the Tuba Playing Prof will now be slammed on anonymous student evals for being "unapproachable." Kids often think that unapproachable means anything less than infinitely approachable. It simply does not occur to them that we have other things to do. They need to learn that this isn't so.
This is starting for me, too. Students want to know will I wait 2.5 hours (after my office hours) for them. And you know they will be late or not show up. Sure. I'll put my life and various obligations on hold for you. I'll wait to walk my dog. I'll give up dinner. All so I can accommodate the little dears.
ReplyDeleteNot.
I now make students confirm their appointments by email. If they don't, I let them know they've lost their appt and need to contact me to reschedule - the following week. This cuts down on waiting for no-shows.
This year, I folded "keeps appointments" into the criteria for their "Professionalism" grade (a framework that I think I got from CM...so shout out to whoever brought that up in the comments). This is all part of an effort to encourage them to treat courses like work instead of a means to shirk "real" work in the unreal world outside academe.
DeleteI will keep y'all posted on how that goes.
Classic. So far I've had two students mention the possibility of stopping by my office hours to catch up in emails announcing/explaining their absences from my class. The number of actual visitors to my office this term? zero.
ReplyDeleteThere was also a complaint in the evals from my summer online class that I wasn't available on campus enough, even though I offered one-on-one conferences both online and in person, and held occasional in-person office hours. Both were, of course, entirely optional efforts on my part; I could legitimately have taught the class from anywhere I could be sure of a reliable internet connection, and never set foot on campus. The same, of course, goes for the students, with whom I was perfectly happy to deal with entirely online. But the moment I offered some on-campus availability, a few wanted extensive on-campus availability.
I think the next step will be for them to expect us to make house calls (only to have them cancel -- or not cancel -- those at the last minute, too).
Honestly, most of my students are pretty reasonable in their expectations of when I will be available on campus, and accept my boundaries when I state them. But the few who aren't, really aren't. What's more, I get the impression that many of them think they're being "good students" because they persist at trying to arrange meetings at whatever hours they can fit into their schedules after more urgent things -- which means pretty much everything else -- have been attended to. I think they think that their expressed willingness to come in at 7 a.m. or 7 p.m. or on Saturday or Sunday should count in their favor (whether or not they make it). The idea that we don't live in our offices doesn't seem to have occurred to them.
"The idea that we don't live in our offices doesn't seem to have occurred to them. "
DeleteThe idea that we actually need to eat does not occur to some of them. For some students we are less than humans; for others, we are superheroes. Personally, I miss Krypton sometimes.