So it’s Friday night and you suddenly realise you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing for that summative that’s due in next week. Is my bibliography too short? How do I reference this incredibly old manuscript? Is the word count inclusive or exclusive of footnotes? Am I even answering the right question? These are all very important questions but we should not expect our tutors to answer them all for us at the weekend, after all we all need days off…
HOWEVER, not receiving an email back by midweek next week is just a bit rude. We’re all expected to sign up to seminars and tutorials when expected, turn up to lectures on time and yet when we’re having the biggest crisis of our lives so far, some tutors seem to decide not to respond to our SOS. How are we expected to impress our tutors with imagination, innovation and intelligence when we can’t even get confirmation that we’re on the right track in the first place?
We’re all given the option of going to our tutor’s ‘office’ or ‘advice’ hours but when you physically can’t leave the house from the stress of awaiting that life-or-death response, it’s a completely different story. Sitting at your desk, staring at your laptop screen, just waiting for ‘Inbox’ to change to ‘Inbox (1)’, we all know what an intense experience it is. But the absolute disgust you feel when the new email you’ve just received from the tutor in question, is not a helpful reply to your flurry of panicked questions, but an admin email to the whole of the module or seminar group, is just too much to handle.
It must be said that we’re all really grateful for the help our lecturers and tutors give us. That is, when they decide to reply to our emails on time. We couldn’t get a degree without them but at the same time, we can’t get good marks in our summatives and therefore can’t get a degree with them and their tardy email responses. If any lecturers are reading this, please please please know we appreciate your time and effort but put us out of our misery, let us know we’re loved and reply to our desperate calls for help!