4 ms·

In my country, the (college) school year is ending and new one is starting (on oct 1st), and of course, some students didn't pass enough exams, some failed a ye

In my country, the (college) school year is ending and new one is starting (on oct 1st), and of course, some students didn't pass enough exams, some failed a year, but want to do exams for the next year, some want to know if they can get another chance at an exam, if they can blame covid for not finishing something, etc. Every college here as a students office, with an email address and a phone number (available few hours per workday), and they still rather ask an incomplete question on reddit (without specifying which college, what year, how many exams missing etc), than call the student office and just ask the only people who can actually answer the question correctly. So yeah... it's not just the "young" kids, but "older kids" too, old enough that making a phonecall shouldn't be an issue anymore.

wildrhythms 4y ago
I have a sneaking suspicion that university administration offices are run by a generation of people who don't know that young people do not use the telephone [1] (you did this too). Give students an all-purpose email address to contact, or a number to text, and I think you will find they are much more willing to get the right help. The medium does matter. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/05/09/311082149/not-so-social-media-why-people-have-stopped-talking-on-phones https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/05/09/31...
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  They have an email.. and a phone number.. and office hours.
robocat 4y ago
In your country is it normal to get help when you ask officials for help? For example: if you have a tax problem can you ask your tax department and get a valid response, or is it a glacial bureaucratic quagmire, with downside risks, backfiring where your questioning costs you? Are school administrators overworked, nasty, or just don’t give relevant advice? Are there hacks around the system that you can only find out through back-channels? Is it a cultural norm to seek workarounds or cheats?
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  Tax department can be hard to reach, but oterwise it's normally easy to get help. Older generations (usually pensioners) need help with everything, from banking to reward cards in stores to changing electricity providers and of course all the government paperwork, so everyone is used to people coming/calling and starting with "I need thing X, what do I have to do?". I've noticed the same issue with banks, stores and telcos, where again, the answer is just one phonecall away (or an email, or a visit in person to one of their many locations), but (especially young) people don't do that and rather ask on reddit/forums. And their support lines are usually reachable within minutes with a live person on the other end. Usually it's advance-basic questions, stuff that support staff knows of the top of their head, but not easily googlable (eg. "i'm missing two exams to pass the year, is it possible to attend lectures and pass exams for the next year, while being officialy repeating this year", and stuff like "if i change my mobile package from X300 to X500 do I need to pay a fee, because I bought my phone on a contract", etc.)
  - robocat 4y ago
    I guess my question should be: what is your theory for why students that are old enough to know better, don’t know better? I wouldn’t have asked when I was a university student because I simply didn’t understand how to ask. I remember being astonished after my degree when a woman I met talked about how she had gamed the uni system: a skill I had never been taught, and which she had learned (or perfected) by working in a political job. I have since learnt better the ways and wiles to pull information from government systems. My parents may complain about electronic systems, but I am pretty sure they wouldn’t want to revert back to triplicate paper systems and the bureaucratic failures that were always potential.

wildrhythms 4y ago

I have a sneaking suspicion that university administration offices are run by a generation of people who don't know that young people do not use the telephone [1] (you did this too). Give students an all-purpose email address to contact, or a number to text, and I think you will find they are much more willing to get the right help. The medium does matter. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/05/09/311082149/not-so-social-media-why-people-have-stopped-talking-on-phones https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/05/09/31...

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
They have an email.. and a phone number.. and office hours.

robocat 4y ago

In your country is it normal to get help when you ask officials for help? For example: if you have a tax problem can you ask your tax department and get a valid response, or is it a glacial bureaucratic quagmire, with downside risks, backfiring where your questioning costs you? Are school administrators overworked, nasty, or just don’t give relevant advice? Are there hacks around the system that you can only find out through back-channels? Is it a cultural norm to seek workarounds or cheats?

ajsnigrutin 4y ago
Tax department can be hard to reach, but oterwise it's normally easy to get help. Older generations (usually pensioners) need help with everything, from banking to reward cards in stores to changing electricity providers and of course all the government paperwork, so everyone is used to people coming/calling and starting with "I need thing X, what do I have to do?". I've noticed the same issue with banks, stores and telcos, where again, the answer is just one phonecall away (or an email, or a visit in person to one of their many locations), but (especially young) people don't do that and rather ask on reddit/forums. And their support lines are usually reachable within minutes with a live person on the other end. Usually it's advance-basic questions, stuff that support staff knows of the top of their head, but not easily googlable (eg. "i'm missing two exams to pass the year, is it possible to attend lectures and pass exams for the next year, while being officialy repeating this year", and stuff like "if i change my mobile package from X300 to X500 do I need to pay a fee, because I bought my phone on a contract", etc.)
- robocat 4y ago
  I guess my question should be: what is your theory for why students that are old enough to know better, don’t know better? I wouldn’t have asked when I was a university student because I simply didn’t understand how to ask. I remember being astonished after my degree when a woman I met talked about how she had gamed the uni system: a skill I had never been taught, and which she had learned (or perfected) by working in a political job. I have since learnt better the ways and wiles to pull information from government systems. My parents may complain about electronic systems, but I am pretty sure they wouldn’t want to revert back to triplicate paper systems and the bureaucratic failures that were always potential.