Carnivorous Cow was less convinced. Her experience of students' excuses for missing class - admittedly very little, as student culture militated against any excuse being offered at all, in the main - was usually along the lines of "the dog ate it" rather than anything skirting the bounds of plausibility. And where students did bother to mail, the tone would either be overly deferential - verging on grovelling - or angry and defiant, rather than the familiarity "cheers, mate" would imply. She wasn't sure what she would prefer. "A visit, in person?" suggested Gramsci.
The Cow snorted. "Someone who is too hungover to make the transition to class, arriving babelas in my office?" she raised a bovine eyebrow. "Have you heard how noisy it gets - the passage amplifies every whisper outside the lab, or from the Beattie Theatre? Their heads would explode and SuperCare would refer me to a clause in their contract which specifically excludes the rinsing of exploded cranial matter from office ceilings and walls. And how would I explain the sorry throughput rate when a mere fraction of the class survive to the end, as a result?"
"And the first name thing?" enquired Gramsci. "How do you feel on that one?"
"I can't say I've ever noticed students - even first years - being expected to call their lecturers anything else!" she retorted. "Only non-academic staff, and outsourced staff like cleaners, are expected to 'Professor' and 'Doctor', and only when, uhm, _other_ factors are present." Gramsci wisely chose not to pursue that.
"So what about the point about expectations of instant reply, then?" he asked.
"I think that's a misreading!" shrugged the Cow. "Martin Hall also sends email at 2am, and I'm sure he does so hoping that the responses will only pour in six hours later - giving him sufficient time to clear customs and become airborne over the Pacific in the meantime. Sending email at ungodly times does not imply the expectation of a response at ungodly times. That's the beauty of email - it's asynchronous. You can respond when you're ready, when you're informed and when you've had sufficient caffeine to ensure brain functionality and prose resembling English. A phone call, or a physical visit - even diarised - doesn't necessarily provide that safeguard. The trouble is," she continued, "that most people seem to have insufficient self-control to avoid hitting the 'reply' button immediately on receipt."
Gramsci thought long and hard. Perhaps, he mused, it would be better if most computers rewired their "send" key to be a "pause" key, physically close to the "oh &^%£ what have I done? Let me undo!" key. Perhaps he should have a word with the manufacturers...
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