Precious Feelings

Anyone else getting emotionally driven pushback from policy language that asks students to take responsibility?

After a fall semester of answering more emails than I should have about course basics, I decided to add a line that they should think about emailing me before they do.

This is a new line, as in one line, in the syllabus that asks them to check their resources (syllabus, modules, textbook, etc.) before emailing me because I have limited time in the day, and that time is better spent preparing coursework for them and not repetitively answering the same email about some assignment procedure (that is obviously in the module).

In the syllabus agreement assignment I have them write, about twenty percent of them were like: this professor is unfriendly and mean and will NOT answer emails. Needless to say, the assignment did not give them the space to vent this; they took it and ignored the assignment instructions in favor of writing personal reactions. The line in question was professionally written and drew a boundary on my time (in terms of not wasting it), but in no way did I write that they cannot email me.

In short, they 1) misunderstood the policy 2) misunderstood the nature of the assignment to agree to the syllabus 3) made sure to start a conflict with the professor on day one.

More than a comfortable amount of them went off in the comments section assignment, and it's just so strange to watch students flip out about course policies that are frankly reasonable.

Can't wait to spend some more time with them!