Wednesday, July 21, 2010

How I say "get your sh*t together" to a student

This e-mail is in response to the e-mail in Taking it Out?
____________________________
Stu, I will do it, but I need the following things from you:

1. I have a very hard time reading your e-mails because of lack of punctuation.
Let's pretend like the relationship between you and your profs is a professional one(which it is). It's good practice for the future.

2. Please send me the course description of the course you want to take so I can try
to find the best fit in our curriculum for a substitute. This is usually found in
the course catalog of the University or from the instructor.

3. Please fill out the form so that all I have to do is sign it.

4. In the future, if you need advising from me (which you seem to periodically),
please do so through the typical channels- i.e. make an appt with me. Otherwise, we
really need you to drop me as your major advisor.

Hope you can understand.
________________________________________

And then I sent an e-mail to Stu's advisor:

Stu is minoring in Biology but never comes for advising (they are not required to).
Stu nonetheless occasionally sends me these semi-incomprehensible, panicky
last-minute missives for advising help. I realize that I'm being a bit of an ass
here, but I'm sure in the [art field] world [they] will need to treat clients, etc.
professionally. I've never seen your work accompanied by anything less than perfect
English and in perfect context!

Stu's failure to do [their] due diligence this time sent me over the edge, so I laid down the law. If [Stu] hates it enough, [they] will only come to you for advising and avoid me like the plague. In which case, could you make sure Stu gets [their] Biology major dropped? It does seem like something Stu needs to be responsible for before applying
for graduation...

Thanks for your understanding.

2 comments:

  1. Good for you! Let's hope Stu's up to the challenge (of being a normal, functioning adult).

    ReplyDelete