As a socially conscientious 18-year-old, I have used texting to cover up amusingly awkward situations. When I don’t have a car, which is all the time, it gets ridiculous to remain in a small store after feigning interest in all 70 flavors of soup on display. That’s when I try to appear preoccupied with my phone until my hour-late ride arrives; for me, texting is a way to appear indecisive about those cans of soup in order to avoid a cashier’s quizzical “why are you still here?” stare. On the other hand, discussion has been raised as to the extent to which texting itself actually produces socially awkward situations rather than mitigating them, especially when it comes to college-level relationships and communication.
While communicating with professors may seem daunting to certain students, why is it even more intimidating for some students to text those professors? Why should we ever be afraid to speak with someone who is there for our academic education and guidance, and how does the medium we use affect how we represent ourselves? Speaking with our professors on the phone is one thing, but when it comes to using texting to converse with our professors, the interaction between student and instructor may seem much trickier. When a professor asks a student to text instead of email or call, why does it feel weird?
Many people wonder whether or not students are allowed to be more chummy with adults when texting. Sometimes professors will even insist that texting would be most convenient for communicating with students. First-year Mikaela Smith said, “I’d prefer to call, but if they told me that texting was better for them, I’d text.” But how would we go about texting with professors? At some point, we will have to force ourselves to decide how best we might respond to, or even initiate, texting conversations with our professors.
Despite what we may imagine, texting doesn’t denote a certain tone of informality, yet it does connote a more relaxed writing style. In particular, we students can become accustomed to texting without attention to accurate titles like “Professor So and So” and polite structures such as “Dear Professor So and So.” I would venture to say that it is imperative to correctly address professors, even in the realm of texting, and even when they relax their structure in addressing us or signing their first name. In my experience, I have found it best to get a clear request for first-name addressing before allowing my texting to assume such informality.
Aside from that, I am a prime example of how not to text. Since I’m pretty new to texting, I have trouble keeping up to speed with my friends’ messages, so I often omit apostrophes and commas in my responses. In my case, I have to remind myself how essential it is that I remember how much my texting habits with friends can affect the way I might text professors; even if we think it doesn’t really matter or that we only text that way with friends, those habits will seem so thoughtless when we use an inappropriately informal style during a texting conversation with a person whom we want to impress. And whom do we want to impress more than our professors? Few greetings are less impressive than my “Hey you!” to friends, and I can only pray that my habit never slips into my texting conversations with professors.
Although texting seems like a very friendly medium of interaction, the convenience of texting may not influence the tone of the texted message. For instance, if professors ask that students text them, a student’s assumption might be that those professors are removing the formality from their relationship with their students simply because texting seems less rigid. More often than not, such assumptions prove capable of leading to uncomfortable, “ughhhhh why did I say that” inducing situations.
A student’s texted greeting of “Yo, [insert professor’s last name], meet me at 5 p.m.?” can lead to a professor’s responding with the hint that he or she “is not your friend” and “expects to be addressed properly as a superior.” How humiliated and embarrassed you might feel! Remember that even when professors seem friendly and easy-going, it can be even more of a struggle to remind ourselves how to communicate in a contextually-appropriate way. Even in the instance that my teachers in high school and my professors at Etown have gone out of their way to make me feel at ease in their presence, I decide to feel comfortable with them while also maintaining a respect for their station.
Certainly, much depends on the personality of the instructor, and texting seems to be a precursor to “friending” on Facebook, yet students would do very well to reaffirm the respect they have for their professors by treating text messages as they would email messages, letters or phone calls to one in a superior position. When we consider the context and how it involves those with whom we associate on an academic or professional level, the idea of utmost importance is that we don’t allow texting to influence our maintaining a polite, refined tone.
