January 22, 2004
All I want to know is...
...is there some planet where it is considered acceptable to dig out your professor's home phone number, and then call them, at 10:45 at night? And then, when the professor does give you some hints, have the nerve to sound annoyed when the professor doesn't tell you exactly how to solve the problem due the next day?
I mean, I'm not even particularly annoyed. I'm just completely floored that anyone would even remotely consider it as an option. Not even a last resort; other options, like email or the course message board, were not even attempted.
'Resisting says, "I am a gourmet dessert, rare and expensive." Being
too eager says, "I am a cheeseburger. You know what I taste like and
you can get me anytime you want."' --Jonathan Prykop
Posted
by blahedo
at 11:11pm
on 22 Jan 2004
This is a universal problem, I fear. We have any number of users at work who feel that it's perfectly OK to call my direct number to ask me a technical support question that, by rights, was supposed to have been emailed to the helpdesk (which I am not a part of, or at least wasn't until October). Some people just prefer to use the phone. I think it's because they feel that they're personally more important that the rest of us, or that their situation is sufficiently dire (kinda like that one person who always sends every mail with "Priority: High" set on it) as to justify the use of excessively intrusive means of communication.
Heh. One of my quadmates senior year called an IMSA math prof at around midnight for help with Mathematica. She wasn't asleep, but damn. Speaking of which... are you teaching CS142 next term? *evil grin*
Alas, no. Dooley is teaching 142; I'll be teaching 305 and two half-credit language courses in C++ and Perl.
If I got a call at 10:45, my hints would not be subtle. I'd figure this was something of a "teaching moment."
