Unreasonable requests from students: Sense check

[LaChanticleer]

Just a place to moan really - in the last week, I have received the following requests from students:

• that I come down (2 floors) from my office to the entrance of our security locked building to let them in for a tutorial they had booked with me because they couldn't find their id card (you know -slide the id card in the card reader to gain entry to an unportered building)
  
  
• after sending out an email to my students in a module with a link in the email to my tutorial booking website and put in bolded letters "KEEP THIS EMAIL" and also putting the link in my email signature, several emails from students asking me to send them the link.
  
  I politely responded NO to all of these requests, but what I really wanted to say was:
  
  grow up
  you're an adult
  I am not your secretary
  
  AIBU as an academic? (btw, I'm a senior professor). Do these students realise that they're behaving quite rudely & unprofessionally?
  
  But beyond my own frustration at them treating me as if I'm their servant, just how do we prepare them for a workplace, where behaviour/requests like this would really land them in the shit? if they asked a senior colleague or maybe their boss, or someone who was funding them, they'd be given short shrift, and probably have a bit of a black mark against them ...

[MangosteenSoda]

The key card thing is actually really annoying and disruptive. It’s definitely not comparable to occasionally opening the door for someone.

The building where I have undergrad meetings is huge and complicated. Thankfully it’s not card access on the main doors though. It would take me 5 mins round trip to let someone in and again to let them out (our card access only doors require the card both ways). When you have back to back student meetings and need the precious minutes in between to type up notes, the whole thing quickly stops running smoothly. Obviously, a one off is a one off, but the OP is referring to a persistent problem.

I do my student meetings in a small office just off a large resource room that is exclusive to that cohort. The resource room is card access, but I prop the door open when I’m seeing students because the amount of forgotten cards means students either miss their slot or disturb ongoing meetings trying to get in. Quite often students just burst into an ongoing 1:1 looking for one of my colleagues rather than just waiting in the resource room.

Another issue is lateness. Lateness to meetings, lateness to group tutorials and lateness to bloody assessments. This one makes me

Having said all that, I love the job and I have a soft spot for 1st years. It’s that balance between cluelessness and total joy with the adventure they are embarking on. We have lots of organised, completely on the ball students too btw.

I think academic staff get a lot of stick on MN. By and large we are nice normal people who work hard and really enjoy our students. I love the teaching part of the job, but it doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to notice, discuss and sometimes complain about the annoying bits.

[LaChanticleer]

I have a soft spot for 1st years

So do I - seeing them learning - when the penny drops about something - right in front of you is just the best thing!

But I'm teaching final year students this year - they're now 5 months off graduation, and some of them - well, I just worry about how they're going to cope in an environment where persistent lateness, for example, would not be tolerated.

[SpinsForGin]

It's not just UGs any more though. I mainly teach PGs and I've noticed a real switch in the level of expectations over the last few years.

This morning is a perfect example..... one of my modules had an assessment deadline for last Thursday and I've had an email from a student this morning expressing their disappointment that they have had any feedback yet!

[SarahAndQuack]

Gosh, this thread went some interesting places.

Not to add to the pile on, which is a bit weird, but @LaChanticleer, I do have issues when you say it's rude to send 'emails with no subject line or greeting'.

IME, this is actually an indicator of educational/social privilege. If you grow up with parents who regularly communicate by email, chances are someone will have told you how to write a professional, courteous email. Just like, back in the dark ages, our parents taught us how to write a polite letter. Maybe we also did this at school (I did). But not everyone does get taught this. I didn't actually know it was rude to send an email with no subject line until after I finished my PhD and was teaching myself - no one ever pulled me up on it, so how would I know?

In the same way, I think it's common students have no clue about what university hierarchy means (and why would they?). Mine are typically absolutely shocked to find I'm not permanent staff, for example. I have had the whole range of titles thrown my way, from 'Miss' to 'Professor'. They don't know you are a 'senior professor' and lots of them are probably pretty shaky on the distinction between 'professor' and 'lecturer'. Oh, and they probably think we are all about the same age so long as we're over 28 or so.

None of that is rudeness - it's just stuff they don't know.

[Adatwistscientist]

You know when you get a review on a paper back and you think "this reviewer knows nothing, they're an idiot, my theory argument was obvious ffs!" And then you spend a week thinking about it and realise that it probably wasn't that obvious and the reviewer was right?

Well the same applies to students I think. If you repeatedly find them asking about a link then you've not made it clear. Link goes into your VLE, in teams and your email so they cannot miss it.

[SpinsForGin]

*haven't had

[Clymene]

@SarahAndQuack

Gosh, this thread went some interesting places.

Not to add to the pile on, which is a bit weird, but *@LaChanticleer*, I do have issues when you say it's rude to send 'emails with no subject line or greeting'.

IME, this is actually an indicator of educational/social privilege. If you grow up with parents who regularly communicate by email, chances are someone will have told you how to write a professional, courteous email. Just like, back in the dark ages, our parents taught us how to write a polite letter. Maybe we also did this at school (I did). But not everyone does get taught this. I didn't actually know it was rude to send an email with no subject line until after I finished my PhD and was teaching myself - no one ever pulled me up on it, so how would I know?

In the same way, I think it's common students have no clue about what university hierarchy means (and why would they?). Mine are typically absolutely shocked to find I'm not permanent staff, for example. I have had the whole range of titles thrown my way, from 'Miss' to 'Professor'. They don't know you are a 'senior professor' and lots of them are probably pretty shaky on the distinction between 'professor' and 'lecturer'. Oh, and they probably think we are all about the same age so long as we're over 28 or so.

None of that is rudeness - it's just stuff they don't know.

Really, it wouldn't have occurred to you that it's rude to expect someone senior to you to open an email that you couldn't be bothered to write a subject title for?

No one ever taught me that - I figured it out all in my own

[HardbackWriter]

To be fair loads and loads of people use the subject line so badly they might as well not use it. I worked under one HoD - so a senior academic no less - who used 'from [her name]' as the subject line of every email she ever sent . And I wouldn't have said it's rude not to use the subject line - a bit annoying, but not rude.

[user1499609760]

I can’t claim nearly as much experience as many on here, but I can compare my own experience as an undergraduate (graduated in 2011, so definitely comparable in terms of things like emails, moodle sites, online resources etc.) and what I see among my own students now that I’m a lecturer. I think they do need a lot more hand-holding compared even to my cohort. Like many here, I receive SO MANY emails about really trivial things that a look through the class moodle, department website, or even a quick Google would solve rapidly. The students’ first instinct seems to be to email their profs about everything & anything. To me it suggests a lack of independence but also, an intriguing possibility mentioned somewhere on the thread, that they don’t have the same network of friends to draw upon as we did to ask. I’m at a university in a very large city, the vast majority of our students commute in, sometimes from great distances, and I do wonder how well they know each other & whether they can draw on one another to ask questions etc. Certainly watching them trying to do group projects would suggest they struggle!

There is also a culture shift though. I don’t think my peers would have dared to bother our profs nearly as much, and certainly not about really small things like those mentioned in the OP. I do wonder if it’s the ‘consumer’ mindset kicking in among some students, they see us as being there to serve facilitate them, which then leads to ridiculous expectations like instant availability via email, that you’ll offer any time for meetings to fit around their schedule, and you’ll drop everything to help with their crisis, whether it’s an essay or a last-minute reference request. Now, not all of them are like this, far from it. But I think the proportion that is, is growing. And that’s before we even get into the ridiculousness that is ‘extension culture’ for assessments…

[Clymene]

@HardbackWriter

To be fair loads and loads of people use the subject line so badly they might as well not use it. I worked under one HoD - so a senior academic no less - who used 'from [her name]' as the subject line of every email she ever sent . And I wouldn't have said it's rude not to use the subject line - a bit annoying, but not rude.

Depends how many emails you get - I get about 100 a day, many of which I can delete without having to read them if I know what they're about.

[SarahAndQuack]

Really, it wouldn't have occurred to you that it's rude to expect someone senior to you to open an email that you couldn't be bothered to write a subject title for?

No one ever taught me that - I figured it out all in my own

It was nothing to do with 'couldn't be bothered' though, why would you assume that? As I said, I simply didn't know it was a thing. Back then, about 99% of the time, senior people I was emailing would know what the email contains as soon as they see my name. Eg., if I was emailing my PhD supervisor, it would be 'here is the chapter draft, on January 24th, that you asked me to send ... on January 24th'. Sure, I could have put 'chapter draft' in the header, but I don't think she or I needed to see it!

I only realised when I started using email a lot more. I think a student, who perhaps hasn't really used email much until now, can be forgiven for not realising. They also don't always realise why page numbers are helpful, and every year I get at least one student who genuinely doesn't realise that I can't identify their essay by telepathy and need a name on it. But I don't think they are deliberately being rude.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

We had a HoD, a very senior Professor, who put 'Please' as the subject line of every email. She sent a lot of emails. (A long time ago, though.)

[HardbackWriter]

I do think that the more things shift online the higher expectations of constant availability become. I'm sure the last couple of years have hugely exacerbated that - I last worked as a lecturer in 2018 so haven't seen it first-hand. I've very much seen it for my secondary school teacher husband, too. I'm not sure that it's necessarily that his students have got more clueless, but just that asking him is an option that simply did not use to exist and now did. I think I thought my teachers slept in a cupboard at the school at the weekends when I was a teenager, it certainly never occurred to me that I could ask them about my homework on a Saturday evening (and nor could I have, unless I'd started looking them up in the phonebook).

[Comefromaway]

I hope you never have to teach either of my very clever but autistic and therefore disorganised children.

My daughter gets many accommodations in her workplace as does my (Higher Education lecturer also autistic husband)

[MangosteenSoda]

Emailing skills are indeed generally terrible. I don’t have particularly high expectations, but I would appreciate a subject line that gives me a clue as to what the message is about. Ideally, there would be a simple greeting and sign off, but I can cope without that. What I really really want is enough context for me to understand what they are writing to me about. It would also be good to receive a response to my reply when it’s the type of reply which requires a response…

Interestingly, international students often go completely the other way and address me as The mostly wonderfully honourable Miss teacher Mangosteen or something similar. It makes me blush

I have one first year advisee who is a mature student and he sends the most wonderfully coherent, well structured emails. Makes my day.

[HardbackWriter]

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

We had a HoD, a very senior Professor, who put 'Please' as the subject line of every email. She sent a lot of emails. (A long time ago, though.)

This was about six years ago! And she sent me an email quite recently (because it turns out they're still using the lecture slides I made then for one module...) and it just had the subject line 'A request from [her name]'...

[user1499609760]

I had a very senior male colleague who wrote his emails in the style of a letter. As in, he’d have the date & location in the top right (think ‘London, 24/01’) and the rest of the email would be formatted exactly like a handwritten letter in terms of spacing, greetings, sign off etc. He also still referred to students as ‘Miss Surname’ or just ‘Surname’, for the male students, throughout. I used to imagine him patiently pushing the space bar constantly to get that formatting…! I loved those emails & missed them when he retired!

[SarahAndQuack]

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

We had a HoD, a very senior Professor, who put 'Please' as the subject line of every email. She sent a lot of emails. (A long time ago, though.)

I know someone who does this! Only she puts 'favour?' on all of them. Like, yes, fine, I am aware it narrows it down a bit, but not enough! Plus half the time it was things that were, in fact, my job. I suspect it was intended to sound polite but it was just a bit irritating.

[HardbackWriter]

I'm suddenly fearful that we're all talking about the same senior female academic who can't use a subject line!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

When I was at secondary school in the 1970s not only could we not contact teachers out of hours but there was no culture of expecting a lot of support. It was sink or swim. Not great for those who sank, and a change was needed, but as usual with any culture change some good things have been lost. Independence and resilience are important in life and some young people with no neurodiverse conditions have not been given the chance to develop these qualities.

[SarahAndQuack]

@user1499609760

I had a very senior male colleague who wrote his emails in the style of a letter. As in, he’d have the date & location in the top right (think ‘London, 24/01’) and the rest of the email would be formatted exactly like a handwritten letter in terms of spacing, greetings, sign off etc. He also still referred to students as ‘Miss Surname’ or just ‘Surname’, for the male students, throughout. I used to imagine him patiently pushing the space bar constantly to get that formatting…! I loved those emails & missed them when he retired!

See, I actually remember being taught to do this! Back when email was very new. We did it in IT. I remember it being explained that, naturally, someone's secretary would print off the 'electronic mails' and so it should look exactly like the 'normal' letters.

I think email etiquette was still evolving when I was a student. I remember my supervisor telling us all to email in our essays, and then in my third year I had a different supervisor from somewhere else, and she was livid when I emailed her, and tore me off a strip about how I should have known to print my essay and hand-deliver it to her pigeonhole.

I do think sometimes people forget that the things they think are vitally important bits of etiquette are pretty idiosyncratic.

[SarahAndQuack]

@HardbackWriter

I'm suddenly fearful that we're all talking about the same senior female academic who can't use a subject line!

It's possible!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Mine is retired now, I hope think.

[MangosteenSoda]

@Comefromaway we receive disability plans for students who register with disability services and make all the recommended adjustments. I’m also super aware of students who may not have registered but who strike me as needing careful handling (my DC is ASD so I’m very aware). There’s no reason to think the OP would be insensitive to anyone in this position. She’s just generally venting about the number of students who breeze through uni without a thought for the wider community. Her later update makes that clear.

[cassandre]

In the welcome/orientation session with our first-years, we talk to them about email etiquette: not emailing a tutor you've never met before by their first name, not sending an attachment with no subject heading or message attached, and so on.

My colleagues and I have also been talking about how we've been receiving more emails with trivial requests, as one poster above said. The current students do seem to need more hand-holding than their predecessors. Perhaps it's because of Covid and the fact that they've spent more time cooped up at home somehow they seem less confident and selfreliant?