My dear professor,
I realize that you’re in practice and that you work during the day. I understand that your adjunct position for an evening class is not your highest priority, and that I, as a lowly student, am little more than that which you scrape off your shoe on the doorstep as you walk into your house after work.
However, you really are not impressing me.
Last week, you scheduled conferences after a class we didn’t have, for an evening that the school wasn’t open, by emailing us 27 hours before said appointments were to begin. This is both uninformed (as you should have known that the building was to be closed) and rude (as, yes, we do have lives, despite what you might think, and some of us may have had plans. I, for one, was traveling back home to take advantage of the long weekend and was slated to be on a plane when my appointment was scheduled). I emailed you to apologize for my rudeness in cancelling the appointment, following the Miss Manners rule of assuming you didn’t know you were being rude.
A week after said email, I hadn’t heard anything back. Should I have contacted you sooner? Yes, absolutely. But forgive me for thinking that you’d have the decency to let me know you were unilaterally rescheduling. Had I not emailed you this afternoon, I wouldn’t have known that I suddenly have plans this evening and have to cancel other things. If you were in any other situation, I’d no-show and reschedule.
Your lectures are bad enough. Every week, you babble on and on, and it’s all the same shit. Nothing substantive, nothing to prepare us for the next assignment, not so much as a model answer after we get our papers back covered in red ink. Just 60 minutes every week of “Be concise. Don’t repeat youself. Be concise. Don’t repeat yourself,” on and on and on. When the babbling mercifully ends, you read lines from papers and laugh at how bad they are before you hand them back. That’s fucking ridiculous. Forgive me for not thinking you’re a great lecturer and hoping you’re much, much better in practice than you are in the classroom.
But, for fuck’s sake, YOU NEED TO TELL ME WHEN YOU RESCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT THAT I NEED TO BE AT! I know your precious little teaching position is the only power you have, and the students are going to have to bend to your will no matter what. I know that we have to respect you, or at least act like it, since you’re grading us. But Jesus, woman, you knew a week ahead of time when you were going to schedule the conferences! I KNOW you have my email address, because you notified me the FIRST week that I had an appointment. Why in the blue hell would you wait until I contacted you when I specifically asked if you were going to reschedule A WEEK AGO?
As it is, I’m skipping my Senate meeting to make it to your conference, where you’re going to shred my paper and tell me I’m a horrible writer. Why? Well, no one’s free to switch slots with me, so I figure it’ll just be less painful to get it the fuck over with. I am NOT impressed, and I wish that I had some sort of method other than student evaluations seven months from now to register my complaint.
Why am I posting this here and not sending it to you directly? Because you’re a self-centred bitch, and I’m not willing to put up with the possibility of retribution. Maybe if I find three or four others who are in the same position, we’ll approach you as a group, but as it stands I’m just not willing to take that chance. Yeah, I’m a pussy. Yeah, that’s just what you want. I don’t care. I can’t afford to compromise my grade any more than I have to.
But for God’s sake, show some fucking consideration, would you?