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'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.
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 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.
I don't mind if my students (Cambridge) call me by my first name. Formality can be polite, but it can also be a barrier to free exchange of ideas and that has no place in a university. I'd be very surprised if MPhil or PhD students didn't call me by my first name.
That said, if you write me an email and can't be bothered to write in grammatically correct sentences then you've obviously decided that your time writing the email is more valuable than mine reading it and I'll respond accordingly, if at all.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
We you talk like an adult you will be treated like an adult.
Language doesn't just transfer direct meaning, but also signifies social status, politeness, education etc. Having a lack of social graces will make your boss hate you and your professors not treat you seriously. It just reflects that we live in a society with socially-enforced hierarchies, and that is not going away any time soon (nor should it)
You can call people with their first names without implying very close familiarity because you still have the option of using a formal second person singular pronoun ("vos" in Latin, "Sie" in German, "vous" in French, "vy" in Russian or Czech, etc.)
Ezekiel 23:20