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The Mudgelog>
February 6 to February 10, 2007
February 6, 2007. I still haven't been called for jury duty, so I have some time on my hands. With any luck, I'll make it through the week without having to report to the court house. I've already been down this route three times in the last 15 years (and even served on a jury). I'm happy to let somebody else have a chance to view our legal system in operation.
Students are really beginning to tick me off, and this time it has nothing to do with their writing. I'll explain. I have an evening office hour each week, and students can sign up to come in to ask questions or discuss class-related problems, one-on-one. I even offer other hours by appointment for those who can't make it at the designated office hour. Those who take advantage of this opportunity say that the conferences are very helpful.
Tonight, four students had signed up. I made the 20-minute drive to the campus and the hike from the parking lot to the Liberal Arts Building in 13-degree weather to meet with them. Not one showed up. Not one has called or e-mailed (they have my home phone and my e-mail address).
Before I left, I had a conversation with the colleague whom I've mentioned before in these pages. He said that students do this all the time – make appointments (sometimes pleadingly) and then don't show up. "They don't know the meaning of rude," he said. I could add: "Or responsibility – or consideration."
Is it possible that the same mindset that causes them to ignore an appointment explains, at least in part, why they haven't learned very much and have come to college totally unprepared? Is it possible that the same attitude that causes them not to explain – either before or after the fact – why they didn't show up also causes them to shrug off homework assignments and to give short shrift to the work that they do? Most likely this cavalier attitude toward responsibility manifests itself in other parts of their lives.
Something is wrong here. I can understand why some students give a very low priority to a required composition course, though they should be mature and sensible enough to at least give it some effort since without it they cannot get a degree. I can even understand the lure of hanging out with their friends and the human failing of procrastination. However, when a student voluntarily signs up for an appointment to get help and then doesn't show up, I really have to wonder how high a priority learning has in that student's value system. Indeed, that troubles me more than the blatant rudeness and lack of consideration do.
February 7, 2007. Here's an update on that spam problem that I reported on February 3. I did change the e-mail address on the two sites where I recently registered from my private e-mail to my "junk" address at Hotmail (which, incidentally, is all that Hotmail is good for, in my opinion).
It may be a coincidence and it's still too early to tell, but the spam in my private e-mail box has gone from a flood to a trickle.
Here are the facts about the two registrations that seemed to coincide with a sudden deluge of spam. One was with MySpace, where I registered out of curiosity. I thought it might be interesting to peruse some of the blogs there, possibly to collect examples of ways that people are abusing the language. To do that, I had to register. The other was with Yahoo (one of the most advertising-heavy venues on the Internet). I wanted to look at, and maybe even participate in, one of the Yahoo groups, but I had to register with Yahoo first.
Both sites have a huge number of subscribers, registrants, or whatever you want to call them. According to Time, MySpace has 32 million, and Yahoo has 39 million. Obviously, that makes them choice pickings for spammers.
The moral of the story (if I'm right) is that, if you don't want to be deluged with spam, do not give your primary e-mail address when you register at MySpace, Yahoo, or any other really popular Web venue. Give a junk address. If you don't have one, create one – something totally unassociated with your primary address or your Internet provider.
February 10, 2007. This probably should go in the Grumbles section, but speaking of junk: Do you ever get annoyed by all those inserts that are put in magazines? You subscribe to the magazine, but they shove, staple, or paste in all those business-reply postcards that ask you to subscribe. Some magazines also include other cards that you're supposed to fill in to get free information about insurance or investments or whatever – like we need more junk mail and want to get placed on more mailing lists. The AARP Bulletin brims with them.
The lazy person's way out is to just tear out and toss this stuff away when we're reading the magazine. However, I think that, since the magazine or the advertiser was nice enough to offer to pay the return postage, we should send the cards back. I don't mean we should fill in any information – just send 'em back. It gives the post office (which gives businesses lower rates than we suckers get) something to do and shifts some of the burden of recycling to those who create the materials in the first place.
Thus, whenever I drop my mail in a mailbox, it always includes a number of blank business-reply postcards – the return of unsolicited mail from the solicitee to the solicitor at the the solicitor's expense. Since there are few opportunities to respond to life's little irritations, one may get a small satisfaction from this efortless task.
What if we all did this? In my private fantasies, I envision an office in the circulation department of, say, Newsweek. There sits an employee sorting through business-reply postcards. Only one in perhaps a hundred has anything filled in; the rest are a waste of time and money. Maybe as the proportion of blanks rises, the circulation and advertising biggies get the message that these inserts are not such a great idea after all.
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