Stuff That Really 'Grinds My Gears...'

I think it’s a growing lack of emotional control. I suspect you are right - these people see male professors as having higher status and so are more circumspect, because “that’s how it is”.
As to whether it’s social media that is behind the lack of control, I wouldn’t want to speculate too far. But I guess arguing about grades is better than the experience one of my supervisors had at the U of Austin back in the 1970s. He was on an exchange from the U of Cambridge, which in those days was pretty repressed, and was astonished when a young woman visited his office to tell him how she would reward him for a better grade. At least this issue doesn’t arise if they argue in class.

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I guess many are there to get a job instead of actually being interested in learning.

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Edited for clarity.

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I would have no problem if she had wanted to discuss it after class or in office hours, if she felt the grade was unfair, but in class was not cool.

yeah, and they haven’t realized yet it’s not an either/or thing.

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My brother’s brother-in-law, who is a full professor, says he is getting this behavior too.

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When I taught high school, I often wished I had designated office hours.

Now that I’m reading what’s happening to profs now, I’m really wishing high school teachers had designated office hours. That way the students would be semi-housetrained when they hit uni.

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Is this someone from work, or from the fire department? At first I thought that you meant someone from the fire department or government, but it sounds like you might be referring to an employee. (UK/US difference, I presume.)

Businesses where I worked had customers, clients, job applicants, employees, etc. in and out so a checklist that didn’t include them wouldn’t be of much use. But in a place where it made sense (and where you could flunk for not having it), it should absolutely be accessible to more than one person. In fact, you should flunk if it is only accessible to one person. Any emergency plan that relies totally on one person is a bad plan.

One problem with Pavlovian response drills is that, after a few false alarm drills, the ‘boy who cried wolf’ effect sets in. They effectively condition people to believe that there is not an emergency, which is the exact opposite of what is intended.

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Anyone who has ever visited a student residence knows that is merely wishful thinking.
The person who invents cat litter for students will make a fortune. (It will need to absorb pizza, beer cans, and other stuff not suitable for discussion on a family oriented website along with emotional outbursts, anomie and existential dread.)

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Who said this was a family website? :wink:

In one of my first student sharehouses, I had a room with a balcony and a built-in wardrobe.

The previous tenant had spent the last year throwing his old condoms onto the balcony and his old syringes into the wardrobe. It was not a fun cleaning job.

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I didn’t say this one was. I am usually very careful about my syntax.

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And that’s exactly what I hated about university. I’d been responsible for housecleaning and cooking at home since I was 13. Having to explain to second-years how they could tell when water was boiling (to make Kraft Dinner) was… unsettling. Hearing people whine about cleaning their one tiny room was worse.

NB: I’m actually a terrible housecleaner now, but in my defence that’s because I was burnt out on it by my early twenties – not least because I was always in charge of cleaning up after other people. I still think of cleaning as something that’s done for other people.

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http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_martha.htm

The nearest thing my atheistic and communist grandfather had to a religious text.

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FWIW, I’m seeing a lot more teachers, especially by the high school level, telling students and their parents at least general guidelines like: I prefer being contacted by X method but never after 8:00pm, am available for meetings from 6:30-7:45am or from 3:30-4:30pm every school day except Wednesdays, etc. etc.

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Twinsies!

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Engineer, was he?

“It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.”

"They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose."

(And “damn-well” was strong talk in Kipling’s day, probably the equivalent of “fucking-well” today.)

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In railway signalling.

Edit - but the poem is more generally applicable. Unlike many people who became very rich indeed, Kipling did not forget, or underrate, the people who made his lifestyle possible.

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First, someone left a dog near my apartment door earlier today. It was out of view, but the walked around a corner, and gave me quite a shock as I was trying to put the key in the door.

Second, the Guardian temp-banned me again. They do this every few days. I’ve asked, and one of the moderators explained that it’s because (a) I’ve posted replies objecting to ableist slurs, sometimes explaining why I think they add to ableism, and sometimes explaining how they were used to legitimize forced sterilization campaigns, and the Guardian regards this as “spam,” and (b) because they don’t want replies, I’ve flagged posts for ableist slurs, and the Guardian regards this as “high volume mis-reporting.” If they don’t want people to flag posts which violate their stated community standards, maybe they should revise their community standards to say for example, “5. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such, except against immigrants, disabled people, [and whomever else they want to tolerate hate speech against].”

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You were temp-banned? I was perma-banned for, very specifically, saying that Netanyahu was extremely bad PR for Israel and that Lieberman had no place in the government of any civilised country.

But it’s OK, I’m not nearly rich enough to read The Guardian these days, it’s very obviously aimed at the £150k plus per year demographic.

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???

I get it free. I sometimes get a nag to disable my ad-blockers, but having tried that, I need my ad-blockers. I don’t need more migraines. I find it better than most American papers, and more compatible with my accessibility tools than many others.

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I’ve had several students this semester literally just not show up after saying they were going to come see me about one issue or another. Then they get annoyed that I can figure out the solution to their problem literally right there either before or after class.

the ones who make appointments and come by when they say they are going to do so are great, though.

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