a naked mole rat who is angry for personal reasons
Thursday, 9 February 2012 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtGiven that I am frequently guilty of theorising in the approximate realm of postmodernism, it's not really fair or consistent for me to take umbrage at undue jargonising. But, dammit, it's my umbrage, and I'm jolly well taking it. I gloss airily over the manifest iniquities of management and pc-speak that infect many meetings I am obliged to attend, and the degree of mental conditioning required for an apparently adult human to use "way forward" or "synergy" in cold blood. What's narking me off right now is emails couched in what appears to be mutated business-speak, if the business concerned is semi-literate, narcissistic and unduly self-important.
Is it just me, or is it basically rude to send me an email which contains the sentence "Kindly correct the transcript accordingly"? Particularly if you're a student talking to me, and you're referring to the email confirming your qualified status I've just sent on your behalf, as a favour, and in the middle of registration. "Kindly" always annoys me. It's a smug, condescending little word, which positions the writer as being obviously in the right, pointing out a glaring error to a lesser mortal who should have dealt with it already. It has the nuance of righteous irritation. I occasionally use it, but only when I'm annoyed beyond belief and wish to convey same in superficially polite but trenchant prose to the object of my fury. From a student to me, the supposed authority, it's unbelievably arrogant: the tone assumes that the correction of course will obviously be made, because of course it's a stupid error which the student is kindly pointing out to me.
Gah. It's made me all twitchy. "Kindly" always makes me all twitchy. As do "Thank you for your earliest attention to this matter" and "Your soonest response appreciated." Because nothing I could possibly be doing could possibly be more important than your request.
Of course, it doesn't help that the same student has some specialised spelling affliction which renders him unable to spell "course" - it's "coarse" throughout, on multiple documents. It makes the whole thing seem rather dodgy.
But the fact that I'm here to whinge about trivialities means that, against the odds, I've survived another orientation and registration nominally unscathed, and with the piles of savaged student corpses acceptably low. If I can just totter through change of curriculum next week, there may yet be calmer waters beyond. And my boss gives me chocolate. It helps.
Is it just me, or is it basically rude to send me an email which contains the sentence "Kindly correct the transcript accordingly"? Particularly if you're a student talking to me, and you're referring to the email confirming your qualified status I've just sent on your behalf, as a favour, and in the middle of registration. "Kindly" always annoys me. It's a smug, condescending little word, which positions the writer as being obviously in the right, pointing out a glaring error to a lesser mortal who should have dealt with it already. It has the nuance of righteous irritation. I occasionally use it, but only when I'm annoyed beyond belief and wish to convey same in superficially polite but trenchant prose to the object of my fury. From a student to me, the supposed authority, it's unbelievably arrogant: the tone assumes that the correction of course will obviously be made, because of course it's a stupid error which the student is kindly pointing out to me.
Gah. It's made me all twitchy. "Kindly" always makes me all twitchy. As do "Thank you for your earliest attention to this matter" and "Your soonest response appreciated." Because nothing I could possibly be doing could possibly be more important than your request.
Of course, it doesn't help that the same student has some specialised spelling affliction which renders him unable to spell "course" - it's "coarse" throughout, on multiple documents. It makes the whole thing seem rather dodgy.
But the fact that I'm here to whinge about trivialities means that, against the odds, I've survived another orientation and registration nominally unscathed, and with the piles of savaged student corpses acceptably low. If I can just totter through change of curriculum next week, there may yet be calmer waters beyond. And my boss gives me chocolate. It helps.
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no subject
Date: Thursday, 9 February 2012 04:57 pm (UTC)The only down side was that in that heat, some of the students really smelt quite terrible. I propose that next year we get a sponsor to hand out free deodorant.
no subject
Date: Friday, 10 February 2012 04:28 pm (UTC)With you on the smelly student problem. And, I regret to say, at least one of the advisors.