I have only had one experience when there was a huge miscommunication over the internet. I usually try to make myself clear and use icon faces when I write so that there aren’t any miscommunications or readers taking what I say the wrong way. I also try to follow up with professors when I do have to email them to make sure what I am trying to say makes sense. The one major miscommunication error I remember having with a professor was my freshman year. It was during pre season basketball season and I was on the road traveling. We had left that Wednesday and there was an assignment due on that same Friday. Well I actually had the homework done by Thursday, unfortunately after the game we changed hotels and the new hotel were we were staying (in the middle of nowhere in Utah) didn’t have internet access. I remember being so upset and not understanding how a high class hotel in 2004 did not have some kind of wireless or even a business center available. I wasn’t able to the internet until tat Sunday and I emailed the teacher saying what had happened and asking if she would still accept my work.
She must have read my email late and night and didn’t realize what she had responded back to me. She simply replied “yes”, so I emailed her the assignment and thought everything was ok. Grades came out and I had a huge zero for that assignment. A 60 point assignment! So once again I emailed asking about the grade, and she claimed that she didn’t accept late work and even though received my work, I wasn’t going to get credit. I explained once again what happened and she went back to look at her emails and to both of our surprise she said she remembered responding to my situation, yet yes was not the only thing she had wrote. Someway she had sent the message without it being completely finished. The rest of her message was supposed to say to come see her and discuss the matter, which I never did because I never received that part of the email.
However, in the end she understood the miscommunication and ended up giving me credit for my assignment. I now make sure that I do my online work before we travel!
wild card
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March 6, 2009 at 3:48 am
Well, that was one big “oops” on the professor’s part no doubt. Eeek. That would have given me a tummy ache to get a zero like that after a “yes” response. I was in a traveling choir in high school. I had an English teacher who was – not very nice – to be polite. She knew since the first day of school that the choir goes on a week long tour in May and yet refused to give any of us the work ahead of time. All the other teachers gave us the week before to do two week’s worth of work so that we wouldn’t get behind. Except for this one. So the music teacher and this English teacher had a go about it and the English teacher agreed, in a letter to the music teacher, to give us extra credit assignments to make up for the missed work during the tour.
You would think all was well. The English teacher claimed that the letter included the test we would miss, but it didn’t. And needless to say, with the “no makeup tests” rule, the extra credit assignment didn’t make a dent in the points missed that week. She was the most hated teacher in the music department, that is for sure.
Good post this week.