Gosh, I didn't expect so many responses! I was marking all day yesterday (trying to make a dent in the 60,000 words worth of essays to be read & returned with detailed written feedback by Friday) so didn't get back online till very late.
The sneering tall poppy tone of some posts is instructive but as Taylor Swift said so wisely: Haters gonna hate.
I'm really not the person some of you have made up in your head - I'm probably more approachable than most - my comment about being a professor was just to give context that
a) I'm old and don't do "down with the kids" - I'm not a chummy matey kind of tutor - I found tutors like that when I was an undergrad to be a bit creepy TBH - but I'm approachable & professional, which I feel is more use to them
and b) when I was an undergrad I'd never have dreamed of behaving as some students do to me (emails with no subject line or greeting is a minor example).
And yes! to being asked about my male colleagues' teaching! Indeed, students sometimes ask me about male colleagues' modules in other (cognate) departments, because they feel they can talk to me more easily.
The students I'm teaching this year are final year undergrads, have been using the building I work in for 3 years (bar last year's Term 2 when we had to be online), use the building regularly for getting to seminars and also use the specialist facilities we have for group & self-directed work in our teaching spaces. They know there's swipe card access!
I was actually seeing this group all day in 1 to 1 tutorials, so I was just not available to let this particular student in. They'd emailed me 20 mins before their appointment telling me their card "had gone walkabout" so I would need to let them in. In an email with no subject line or greeting, which I saw because I was checking something online for the student with me at that moment.
Ditto the systems we have for making tutorial appointments for a 1 to 1: we use a booking system with a link that we give to the students, plus we all have our personal ink in our email signatures. I suppose I could dictate to them their set weekly tutorial appointment in the seminar, but the booking system gives them the freedom of choice to pick a time they prefer (within the range of times/days I'm available).Ditto that I offer either in-person or online. Lots of choice for them.
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a student to read an email clearly titled with the module number & the topic of the email. Surely that's an important professional "soft skill"? We don't put this on the VLE because it's a big team-taught module and they get confused (and they rarely read the VLE anyway - we can track who logs into it - they just bang out an email). Tomorrow maybe I'll show them how to file emails in labelled folders, or search their email inbox ... But that will cut into valuable discussion/learning/reaching time in the seminar. And facilitating their learning in my subject is my job, I think.
Our professional service colleagues in the adjoining building have become so fed up with being asked to walk over with them & let them in, that there is a blanket ban on that. Our Administrator is firm (fierce!) about this. My seminars are regularly interrupted by students texting their friends to come down & let them in. I try to run relaxed and welcoming seminars - they're free to leave for whatever reason (some have disability plans which ask that they be allowed to leave to decompress or the like) so I just give a blanket permission that any time anyone needs to leave, do so, quietly, and come back when you can.
But interruptions for basic organisational things - an ID card they need to enter & use the Library & many many campus buildings, as well as i operating as a kind of cash card - well, I just worry that this kind of regular - minor, I grant you - lack of responsibility is going to make their subsequent working lives difficult.
And for every professional service colleague's story about having to nag/chivvy academics, I can match with having to do the work of a professional services colleague. Just last week I had to remind someone that the thing they kept sending me to do (most recently with a veiled threat about my responsibility at law) I had done 3 months ago. Something I kept telling them. I finally sent the original report + email trail from November, but it felt a bit passive-aggressive.
I've also had two grant applications - one of which was quite big & would have funded about 10 PhD students for the University (so over £1mill income), both of which took 6 months of my research time (always a slender commodity) - go down the drain because admin colleagues responsible for doing the final sign off neglected to do so. I didn't even get an apology, just a "Whoops, we got mixed up in the office."
BUT I was actually motivated to ask about this - in a section of MN where academics talk to each other about our current working conditions & dilemmas, because I am really concerned and worried about them. The 2 examples I gave in my OP are just the most recent and yes, pretty minor. But I think they're indicative of something more concerning. The regular requests for me to give them information which they have access to in multiple ways, the regular lack of organisation, the assumption that my time is of no value, or that when I'm answering these requests I"m not doing something that would actually be of more benefit to them (or other students) - I worry about them. They are 5 months away leaving university for the working world. I worry about them - I worry that they're going to get a big shock when they are in jobs where their managers are not necessarily approachable or forgiving of lack of responsibility.
I'm also very aware (yes, of course I've worked elsewhere than a university - but a university is a legitimate workplace just like anywhere else) that employers say publicly that they find current graduates unprepared for the responsibilities and discipline of professional work. And I know Socrates complained about the "youth of today"
. But I can't just tell students off (sharp words etc as recommended on this thread) because the teacher-student relationship is a delicate one, and I don't want to mess it up with having to discipline them. It isn't school; these undergrads are all 20 or 21.
Maybe I'm overly worried about this? Maybe I should just shrug my shoulders and let them bumble their way into the workplace, but I feel the need to find ways to prepare them, without that getting in the way of a good teaching relationship.
Anyway, thanks for all the responses. I'd better get back to my marking ...