Setting some boundaries

I'm in, briefly, this morning, to finish one thing I planned to get to yesterday but didn't (finishing off the summer soil stuff). Normally on Saturdays this semester I haven't been in; I've been in the field.

I came in and turned on my computer and found an e-mail from a student. Asking about their grade. As I have had about five e-mails from this individual asking about their grade (yes, it's good they care, but I have guidelines up on how they can calculate their grades themselves), I am not motivated to deal with it right now. (Also: I really am not typically "here" on a summer Saturday).

And it occurred to me, as I was going through my first (of two) soil samples: Students seem to ask a lot of stuff I never would have dreamed of asking. Case in point: I gave an exam. A student did poorly on it and e-mailed me to ask if I'd allow them to retake it.

I had to look at that e-mail for several minutes, going "Are they really asking.....are they saying what I think it says?" As in: you've already seen the test and what was on it, now a couple hours later (hours you MIGHT have been boning up), you want a mulligan because "I just don't know what went wrong" (not the exact words as to why the test grade was low, but close).

I sent an e-mail back saying effectively, "sorry, no, and don't ask me that ever again" and got a response "No problem. I figure it doesn't hurt to ask!" (Except, it kind of does....those kinds of things go in the Professorial Memory Bank and some years down the road if a student comes looking for a recommendation....)

And I got to wondering - while I have been told many times (and it's probably true) that "it's the unusual student that becomes a professor" (and therefore: my experience and attitudes as a student may not necessarily map onto my own students), I also wonder if the existence of the Internet enables some of the more bizarre or over-reaching requests.

Back in the Dark Ages when I was in college (back when we rode Dire Wolves to school), if you wanted to ask a professor something, you went to his or her office hours. And you asked face-to-face.

(And an aside: back when I was in college, there was none of this mandated ten hours per week with at least one hour per business day and no office hours before 8 am business. Professors got to set office hours based on their own whims, which meant some people were really hard to find and you had to make an appointment, or catch them after class)

Anyway, you had to ask face-to-face. And that took a certain amount of guts and a certain amount of determining beforehand if your request was reasonable, or if the professor would (if they were one of the nice ones) say "Sorry, no" and then turn back to their work or (if they were not) laugh you out of their office (or throw you out).

And while I suppose the more timid students were at a disadvantage there (while I am timid in some ways, I didn't have problems approaching a professor with what I thought was a reasonable question, and even some of my majors professors would invite groups of us to their office for further discussion of topics or of our future plans), I think it also may have weeded out some of the strange requests, like "Is it okay if I miss your 8 am class because I reeeeeaallly want to go to the midnight premier of this movie" or "Can I take the test over again?" or "I made plans for a ski trip for two weeks the middle of the semester, will you give me all the work I'm going to miss early, before I leave?"

I think having to make the effort to ask face-to-face makes a difference. (Even on the phone - and I admit, I'm one of those people who HATES using the phone, though I think it's partly because I can't see a person's expression and I tend to judge how things are going by a person's expression, for example, whether to keep asking what I'm going to ask, or to just shut up and go, "Okay, I see that won't work.")

But the other thing with e-mail is there seems to be more of an assumption of immediate response. I have a clause in my syllabi that e-mails during the week will be answered within 24 hours, but e-mails on the weekend may have to wait until Monday for an answer. I still get people who are occasionally put out that I didn't e-mail them back within fifteen minutes or something. I mean, if it's a real world-ending thing, or if I'm bored in my office (procrastinating from something else), I might answer an e-mail as it comes in - but sometimes I need to sit and think about it. Or in some cases, I might draft up a reply in my head, then wait a few hours so I write something less angry or dismissive.

What really gets me are the people who send e-mails at, for example, 11:35 pm and expect me to answer them before their 8 am class the next day. Uh, guys? At 11:35 pm I am asleep. If I'm not asleep there's a big problem seeing as I teach an 8 am class. When I come in at 7 I MIGHT have time to respond.....or I might have to prep some stuff for the 8 am class and don't.

I once spoke with someone whose wife worked for one of those large all-online universities. He noted that she was directed to hold a set of "office hours" per week late at night - like 11 pm to 2 am - to "accommodate" the students with odd hours. So apparently (I say apparently because it was some years ago I was told this, and like I said, it was the husband of the person in question, so he might have had it slightly wrong), one night a week she was expected to alter her schedule for the convenience of her students....in a situation where the contact could be asynchronous anyway. (Really, is it so awful for someone to get a reply to a midnight e-mail at, say, 7:30 the next morning?)

And I think maybe a lot of us who work in education need to stop and think about accessibility. Yeah, it's great to have increased accessibility - but if you get people constantly barraging you with requests you can't ethically fulfill (like the redo of the test - it would be unfair to everyone else in the class even if I had wanted to do it), that kind of eats at your morale. And the expectation of immediate response, and the UPSET that some people display when you don't get back to them within an hour or two of their e-mail even though it was sent at a time after which most faculty have gone home for the day....yes, I get that we're grown ups and part of our pay is dealing with this kind of thing (The old joke: "They don't pay me to teach; they pay me to grade" could be rewritten as "They don't pay me to teach or grade; they are paying me to put up with the attitudes of certain people"). But I also think students have to learn that in much of the business world, a 24-hour turnaround on e-mails is FANTASTIC and something to be celebrated, instead of complaining, "I sent this e-mail at 12:15 am and the lousy blighter didn't e-mail me back until 7 the next morning!"

I suppose there's also elements of "ask" vs. "guess" culture coming into play - as I've said, I'm very firmly in the "guess" culture camp - you ask for stuff if you are reasonably sure of getting a yes; you don't want to "put someone out" by making them say no - and also, at least in my case, you don't want to risk the person thinking poorly of you because you asked for something unreasonable. In "ask" culture the rules are quite different and I find myself having to remind myself, "Some of these students are 'ask culture' people; don't let what they're asking for get under your skin."

But still: I think some of the requests ARE unreasonable, like the "I'm taking 2 weeks vacation the middle of the semester and I expect you to accommodate me with all the work in advance...."


***

And now that I'm done, a decision: do I go antiquing in Sherman (and check for any new issues of the British knitting mags) like I had thought, or just go home and hide in my cool dim living room and knit? It's hotter than Satan's backsweat out there....then again, I'm almost out of salad and the local Mart of Wal only carries their own house brand now, and it's *terrible* (you wouldn't think a company could ruin salad, but I guess it's possible....the "butter lettuce" I got was overmature and bitter). Hm. I guess I'll go home and eat lunch, and then figure out if I feel like driving through the heat and the glare and possibly dealing with people who are out at the stores because they don't feel like paying for airconditioning at home...


I will say it looks like the heat up north is breaking....Illinois is cooler than it was. I hope it stays that way because in just a bit over a week I will be up there for a short visit with parents.