Are we seriously doing a “both sides are bad” with this completely of control prof? Yeesh.
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$3.50
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This is where I’m at. The original email was fairly polite especially given the obviousness of the grading mistake, with the last line maybe being 2% assholish. The professor’s response is completely unhinged. It’s like an NFL coach (Tom Coughlin?) with a dumbass “if you’re not 15 minutes early, you’re late” rule.
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No, we’re definitely not doing that. You might be.
Everyone is on the same page here. Prof is nuts and wrong. Student’s email is kind of douchey but certainly doesn’t warrant that response. Prof is much, much worse.
Most everyone is trying to make a distinction here. Like the difference between Trump keeping documents and Biden keeping documents. One is clearly worse and everyone here agrees on which one and why. Same is true with the emails. Everyone is clear on who is worse and why. Both-sidesing it would be someone coming in and saying they’re both close to equally bad. Unless I missed it, I don’t think anyone is doing that. You might be the closest, and obviously you don’t think that either.
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Believe me, if I could, I would*. I really don’t want to have this fucking meeting.
*not really
What am I missing?
Is it totally normal in 2023 for a bunch of guys to be like
“Yeah. I mostly outsource dealing with teachers and schools to the missus”
I don’t think it should be a general rule. Every couple will decide their most efficient division labor and just go with that. I’ve only got an N of 1. So I can only tell you what works for us. In our case, given our respective schedules, it’s very easy for her to meet with teachers and such. It’s much more difficult for me.
When I was growing up my dad did it all. For my wife it was exactly 50-50. So if anything, we’re both deviating from what we were accustomed to.
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Made a little fyp. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little self selection bias here.
I don’t know the latest stats but I assume teachers are still more likely to be women, too, so I don’t think it’s that strange if wives were a little better suited for these conversations than husbands, to avoid the perception of bullying.
Basically I don’t think it’s automatically attributable to adherence to traditional gender norms, I think there could be other reasons.
Go back and read the email and point out what’s wrong with it. To my eye, it’s clear, direct, concise, specific, polite, neutral in tone, ends with an explicit call to action—pretty much everything you could ask for. I strongly suspect that what people are reacting negatively to is that the email isn’t obsequious or passive aggressive, but those are bad qualities. You could rewrite the email to start out “I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a question about the grading of my last assignment.” but that email would be much worse. The situation is inherently awkward, because the professor fucked up the grade and the student is rightfully upset about it, but that’s not something that can or should be tip-tied around.
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I dont have kids. Which is why other than the original question, I dont think I have enough experience to really follow up.
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A lot of jobs have very skewed compensation that makes it a terrible strategy for both parents to be like 80% committed at work. It pays a lot better for one parent to be a workaholic and the other to be part-time/mommy-track/whatever. And given the existing background of discrimination, it’s often rational for the worker to be the father.
It’s all very fucked up, but the pressures on parents to conform to “traditional” gender models are very powerful, even when they understand how fucked up it is.
This isn’t two co-workers emailing each other, it’s a student emailing a professor. “Let me know when you’ve done it” is passive aggressive (or maybe just aggressive) and makes you sound like a dick. If you delete that line it’s probably a much less douchey email
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The student email was not good but they’re 19 years old or whatever. Tasking the professor with “tell me when it’s done” is pretty yikes but again, it’s a kid.
The professor should be insta-fired.
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The word for a tone that’s too direct to be called passive aggressive and too reasonable and calm to be called aggressive is “assertive,” not douchey. The last sentence is very hard to write. You could say “Please fix this when you have a moment,” but the real ask is actually “Please fix this when you have a moment, then tell me so I can confirm you did it.” But that actually would be rude to say, so what are you supposed to do?
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“Can you let me know what happened here?” would have been fine imo.
“Let me know whenever you fix it” is a bit douchey for something that (at that point) was likely to be a simple clerical or software error.
Obviously the professor’s response is orders of magnitude worse.
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I think this is the problem with it. Asking to have your grade fixed is a reasonable request. Asking to be notified when it occurs is a courtesy. It’s a courtesy I would expect, but as with other courtesies you’re not supposed to demand them out of people. Politically it’s better to phrase even the grade fixing part of the professor’s job as a request. Phrasing not only that but the subsequent notification as a demand is just going to make the professor defensive and less willing to comply.
This. It’s an extremely awkward position for teenager who’s just learning to navigate professional settings.
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Agreed. Part of that learning process is making small mistakes (e.g. coming off like a bit of a d-bag in an email), realizing you made them, and bettering yourself.
This raises a question - is it a good idea for a professor to respond to one of these emails with etiquette feedback? I’ve never done it, even when students’ emails have been much worse than the one above. (I assume that the kind of student who sends this type of email isn’t going to react in a thoughtful and appreciative way.) But I know that some people do.
Why would you assume that?
This particular spot seems like a bad time to start lecturing someone on workplace etiquette, but I can imagine situations where a prof gently explaining things could be helpful.