Slashdot Mirror
'U Can't Talk to Ur Professor Like This' (nytimes.com)
Millennial college students have become far too casual when they talk with their professors, reads an opinion piece on The New York Times. Addressing professors by their first names and sending misspelled, informal emails with text abbreviations have become common practices (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; here's a syndicated source) among many students than educators would like, Molly Worthen, an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill adds. From the article: Over the past decade or two, college students have become far more casual in their interactions with faculty members. My colleagues around the country grumble about students' sloppy emails and blithe informality. "When students started calling me by my first name, I felt that was too far, and I've got to say something," Mark Tomforde, a math professor at the University of Houston said. Sociologists who surveyed undergraduate syllabuses from 2004 and 2010 found that in 2004, 14 percent addressed issues related to classroom etiquette; six years later, that number had more than doubled, to 33 percent. This phenomenon crosses socio-economic lines. My colleagues at Stanford gripe as much as the ones who teach at state schools, and students from more privileged backgrounds are often the worst offenders. [...] Insisting on traditional etiquette is also simply good pedagogy. It's a teacher's job to correct sloppy prose, whether in an essay or an email. And I suspect that most of the time, students who call faculty members by their first names and send slangy messages are not seeking a more casual rapport. They just don't know they should do otherwise -- no one has bothered to explain it to them. Explaining the rules of professional interaction is not an act of condescension; it's the first step in treating students like adults.
This is basic stuff, and they graduate high school without learning it. What did they put on their college application, a plagiarized form letter?
If you want to be taking just mildly serious, don't talk like that to anyone.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
Y did u flunk mezzzzz?
The community college I went to was pretty laid back with most instructors being called by their last name. The other community college in the district was more uptight with instructors insisting on being called "Instructor" before their last name. Never understood that stick-up-the-wazoo attitude, as they were teaching the same material and getting paid the same rate.
The only person I know who uses "U" and "ur" in serious correspondence is over 50 years old. It's not a millennial problem. It's an idiot problem.
No. It is not the job of college professors to correct students unable to communicate correctly. That was the job of the high school teachers. Students unable to communicate correctly should not have been admitted to college, because they shouldn't have received their high school diploma.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'd never have used a professor's first name unless the age gap was minimal, and they had explicitly said it was OK... BUT... we walked half-way across campus in 95-degree heat in 90% humidity, to a temporary/portable building that sat maybe 30 students... Then we get told that unlike just about every other class we'd been in, this philosophy teacher (a condescending hippy, ironically, enough) didn't allow drinks... I watched an argument get pretty heated once, and started wondering, hey, who's paying who to be here?
I had a sucky sig.
People have gotten much more informal with EVERYONE. They have no respect or perception of authority or seniority.
Hell, 10+ years ago, Scrubs even did an episode where the (older) Kelso was trying to get through to this overweight girl about the dangers of surgery and she basically talked over him and Google'd everything as he spoke and he went on about how back-in-the-day, being a doctor "meant something" and you got things like free hair cuts, not to mention RESPECT.
So if a comedy show noticed this 10+ years ago, it's been going on for a lot longer. I've gotten far in life simply by treating everyone with respect. People notice and appreciate it when you go out of your way to recognize their inherent human dignity.
It's almost as if both instructors and students prefer to be addressed in ways which make them comfortable and feel they deserve that basic level of respect.
When my grandparents were in college, they were addressed by their professors as Mr. and Ms. Now, professors address their students by first name. I'm all for insisting on correct spelling and grammar, and for respecting the use of Dr. or Professor, but perhaps the faculty could win support if they treated their students like the adults they are.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
nuf sed
Humor aside, your instructor was correct. Professional life requires the ability to effectively communicate to a large audience. Appeasing your friends and acquaintances is not the same thing. Sadly we have had educators claiming what "you" want is all that matters, to the detriment of millions of students.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
But on the other hand, some students are starting to demand that professors address them according to the personal pronouns with which they personally identify.
To which all professors should respond with some variant of "You're welcome to your own self-image, but I am not required to participate in it."
the usa is ranked round 23rd in math and god knows what in literacy
*Around
your all doomed there ok , if you want to teach kids that might actually learn move to another nation
*You're
I'd also like to see proper sentence capitalization, and punctuation usage other than excessive exclamation marks. Really, do 13 exclamation marks somehow add more to a sentence than a single one?
Overall I give that post a D. While comprehensible, it needs a lot of work.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Look to your left. Now look to your right. None of you are going to have jobs after you graduate, and you'll each be in debt for a couple of hundred grand. So it doesn't matter how you fucking address the fucking professor. You're still gonna be fucked.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Henceforward you will address me as "my lord", "sire" or "your majesty". Failure to do so will result in failing this class.
> They just don't know they should do otherwise -- no one has bothered to explain it to them.
Or, their parents have explained it to them, like, a bazillion times, and they just roll their eyes and do whatever the hell they were going to do anyway.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Calling someone by a title doesn't indicate respect, it indicates obedience.
I don't demand that others call me by a title. And I've never requested it of my students either, but then again, I teach in a professional setting where we assume people are adults and don't use childish tricks like this to make them "prove it" to us.
It's so scary that university administration has so warped our students that they believe this crap.
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/s...
"We've found by experience that people who are careless and sloppy writers are usually also careless and sloppy at thinking and coding (often enough to bet on, anyway). Answering questions for careless and sloppy thinkers is not rewarding; we'd rather spend our time elsewhere."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It is called courtesy, which even 'the help' deserve. Also respect, as your professor is no doubt superior to you in knowledge (or you made a really bad choice in who you decided to pay), and probably older than you as well. You are probably one of those obnoxious asses who snaps his fingers at waiters, just to show who is paying who.
My teacher introduced himself as "Professor Blank", so I called him that. OTOH, I had no problem with him calling me by my first name. I never really thought of myself as a "Mr. Magnon" anyway.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I know it's fashionable to have flat, zero-hierarchy organizations and brief communications styles, but I can tell you from 20+ years of working, clear spoken and written communication is not some irrelevant concept from a bygone age. I'm not one of those people who demands respect simply because of a rank or power dynamic, but I will have a lot more respect for someone who addresses others politely, states their opinions like adults, listens to others' points of view, and can write clearly. It also works both ways -- in my experience I have been able to get much further in having people see things my way than colleagues with more abrupt communication styles.
I am firmly in the introvert crowd, and not a salesy type in the least. But, no matter how introverted you are, learning a few common social courtesies is critical to being successful in any setting. I'm not even talking about ladder-climbing brown-nosing style success -- I know part of the reason I'm kept around and allowed to do interesting technical work is that my bosses know I'll make them look good and be professional; in short, they don't have to worry I'll say something stupid.
yo dawg that b phat n shit
ya feel me dawg
Words have two types of meaning, both connotation and denotation. Two words may have the exact same denotation, but quite different connotation.
The primary purpose of clothing is clothing is to cover the skin. Other purposes of clothing, such as "saggin" pants, dress shirts, and lab coats include communicating information about one's values, role in the current context, and standards of behavior. Certain clothing suggests that the wearer believes snitches get stiches, other clothing indicates the opposite.
Similarly, the tone of language communicates all of the above and much more. If you are unable to understand the difference between "yo dawg u b trippin" and "Sir, I believe your perspective may lack appropriate context", you may be lacking an essential skill. The two sentences convey quite different connotations, though the same denotation.
OTOH, "the" is properly spelled with thorn (the letter of the alphabet). But some young wags started spelling it with "th" or sometimes "y". Note it is still correctly pronounced as "the", not "yee". The latter is a word (spelled "ye" now but once spelled "ge") that has fallen entirely out of favor except in a few very formal and somewhat ritualistic settings.
Of course, formal writing generally should avoid the latest trends, yet it would be quite confusing (and annoying) if it insisted on Middle English. Today's informal writing is tomorrow's formal writing.
I'm also a 'technologist who works with academics' and I find your comments bizarre. That 'three-five minute self-introduction of themselves' is the part where I like to listen most clearly, as understanding where someone is coming from, their context, what they're working on, what they want to solve, is the single-most important thing to ensure I'm giving them effective solutions that they are actually looking for, i.e. that I'm going to be offering something of value to them.
And knowing someone's title is just a trivial, basic matter of respect in the academic. If you keep calling someone who has earned a doctorate "Mister" then yeah, they're probably going to keep getting annoyed about it, because you're being sloppy and disrespectful, you seem to have a chip on your shoulder, and I would never hire you, because that same sloppiness is probably going to translate to the work you do also. If you can't even remember someone's title, you probably can't remember basic things relating to the technical problems at hand.
What I don't understand is why people don't think it's polite to not address people the way they want to be addressed. With a very few exceptions, I don't give a crap about other people's sex organs or gender or whatever, so why not call people what they want to be called?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Well, learn how to fucking make them then. I'm too busy with the career kickstarted by a BSc from one of the world's top five business schools.
Lol, yeah, sure you are. And I just got hired by NASA to be a door gunner on the Space Shuttle.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...