Every semester I get emails from students that bother me. Every teacher has different preferences. I don’t expect students to have mine memorized. Even so, I still find some especially annoying. The one that has been bothering me this week is the “hey, I won’t be in class, just so you know” email. I get it, I just don’t care—unless you make it my problem too.
I Get It I was an undergraduate student too.
I have been seeing and hearing more from my friends, acquaintances, and even total strangers about “work-life balance.” It has really been setting me off. Sometimes I have very strong opinions about relatively minor things. At least, they seem like minor things to other people. “Work-life balance” is exactly one of these things. I am bothered because the choice of words in the phrase is fundamentally incorrect, but I’m even more bothered because of what this improper word choice reveals about our culture.