I received two emails from students in my FYC composition course recently. While not the exact wording or details, the emails looked something like this:
Dear Dr. Moore,
I am not feeling well, and I don’t want to make anyone else sick. I won’t be in class this morning. I saw on the syllabus that we are doing peer workshops in class today, and I have downloaded the handout. Is this something I could make up, maybe virtually or with another class? Please let me know what else I need to do. Thank you for your time.
Your student
Dear Dr. Moore,
My car won’t start, so I won’t be in class this morning. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Best,
Your student
The first email aligns with my syllabus policies for FYC; students who request alternative assignments in a timely manner can earn participation points for class activities that they miss. It’s specific and respectful; it also shows me that the student has taken advantage of resources such as the syllabus and the online course platform.
The second, however, baffles me a bit—and I’ve been encountering similar language more often over the past few semesters. I am not sure what inconvenience the student is causing: I will be teaching the course regardless of whether or not the student is present. If no group work or assigned presentations are occurring, the student’s absence will not inconvenience me in any way.
What might be an inconvenience is the expectation that I will take the initiative to ensure the student does not lose ground—informing the student what activities were missed, sending the handout, creating the alternative assignment, negotiating extensions if needed, etc. In some cases, students assume that notifying me of an absence “covers them”—they need not think about my course until they return, at which point they expect that I will provide (without being asked) a re-cap of what was missed, copies of handouts, and a revised schedule to follow until they are “back with the flow of the class.”
When students who have missed class (with or without a perfunctory apology for “the inconvenience”) ask me to “go over the handout” or explain a concept on which I had dedicated significant time during the session they missed, I must pause and restrain the snarky response that first comes to mind—similar to retorts that arise when I am asked, “Did we do anything last class?”
I don’t want to engage in stereotyping (what’s wrong with this generation?) or blame-casting (what are those high school teachers telling them?). Nor will I cast a rose-colored nostalgia over my own college days to suggest that (pre-internet and email) my college cohort knew better, taking full responsibility for their own learning.
Still, I cannot deny the frustration of unrealistic student expectations, which I suspect all colleagues teaching FYC and corequisite courses experience. I understand why, given all that gets dumped into the course objectives in FYC, the idea that we are going to teach students how to write an email regarding an absence and how to behave following that absence—basically, how to be a college student—seems unreasonable.
But consider how a discussion of the ideal “absence email” (which for me would be like the first email in this post) offers an opportunity for rhetorical meta-talk: a discussion of audience, purpose, exigence, ethos construction, and genre.
This past week, I did just that—I used an early-semester syllabus review to explain what information I hoped to see when students inform me of an absence:
- the fact that they’re missing (a reason isn’t always required, although it’s often appreciated),
- what they’ve done because of the absence (i.e., reviewed the syllabus, asked a friend for notes, etc.), and
- any specific requests (alternative assignment, an office visit later in the week, an extension of deadlines, etc.).
I will revisit the model throughout the term, not only as a reminder of what I expect, but also as an illustration of linguistic and rhetorical concepts we are discussing.
I’ll have to see if I am still getting “sorry for the inconvenience” absence emails in May.
Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash
