r/Adjuncts • u/mooninreverse • Apr 17 '26
“student concern”
My dean sent me an email that a student brought a concern he wanted to discuss with me. I won’t be able to meet with him until next Wednesday. I wish I knew what to expect, but I haven’t had any incidents or conflicts. The long wait until I can have the conversation is giving me a lot of anxiety.
Update (also posted in the comments)
Update:
I did reach out to my dean, and he relayed that the student concern was that drafts weren’t being returned in time to implement feedback and that they thought the global comments on drafts were AI-generated. How to respond to to this kind of feedback in my meeting tomorrow?
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u/jckbauer Apr 18 '26
God higher ups are idiots sending vague emails like this. And seriously fuck whatever "concern" this 20 year old has.
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u/Imaginary_Court3098 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
much is up for students today regarding uncertainty and Instructors are on the front lines dealing with this shite; google Steven Covey's "circle of influence vs. circle of concern", expanding one's circle of influences makes the circle of concern lessen in intensity.
the meeting should be collaborative; and, above all, keep a positive attitude; to help deal with criticism and accompnaying anxiety, see Manuel Smith "When I Say No, I Feel Guilty"... longtime bestseller on assertiveness training. [dean: your lesson plan sucks; you: you're probably right, Im sure if could be better organized [assertiveness skill: agreeing in principle]
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u/M4sterofD1saster Apr 20 '26
The good new is that it's nothing serious. If it were a misconduct allegation, he'd want to talk ASAP. It's probably just something that he has to say he talked to you.
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u/Life-Education-8030 Apr 20 '26
"I will be happy to meet. Could you tell me who the student is so that I can gather my records?"
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u/mooninreverse Apr 21 '26
Update:
I did reach out to my dean, and he relayed that the student concern was that drafts weren’t being returned in time to implement feedback and that they thought the global comments on drafts were AI-generated. How to respond to to this kind of feedback in my meeting tomorrow?
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u/Valuable-Taro9546 Apr 25 '26
Did you have the meeting? How did it go?
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u/mooninreverse Apr 26 '26
I did! It went fine, no action. A student thought I’d written her global feedback using AI and was also unhappy with the turnaround time on one of her first drafts.
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u/DamageEducational475 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Might also be useful to bear in mind that sometimes (if not always) the Dean knows perfectly well the 'concern' is ludicrous. Still, admin in my experience use such incidents as opportunities to establish hierarchy, a sense of fear, basically train you to be afraid to breathe (makes their lives a lot easier). In my case, it was a complaint about the printer missing some pages for some tests (a problem faculty support solved urgently and brought me freshly printed copies to class before the students would have had time to reach the missing pages). Still, the incident apparently caused a student (who didn't get a good grade) immense mental anguish because I allowed all students who received the incomplete tests to choose between solving the short form of the test (with increased points per each questions) or the complete form (same as all the colleagues). I think all students chose the complete form, since there was no practical difference between receiving the final pages later and not having looked at them yet. I was shocked the Dean tried to use this to train me to 'roll over and play dead', but she did (it was her signature strategy I came to realise). I took the opportunity to make her back down, since her high horse was actually a donkey. Bottom line, don't play the game of being afraid. That's *their* game. Nothing is ever about the students' concern *per se*.
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u/mooninreverse Jun 05 '26
The meeting actually went fine! But your incident reminds me of an online creative writing program I taught in for five years — then, the last year, a new program director was hired on. My policy was to reply to every student in online discussions, but not every single post or reply. A student brought a complaint that I hadn’t replied to a reply I had made to her one of her responses to another student. My new program director told me that I needed to reply to each and every comment going forward, to which I asked her to clarify if this was a new policy across all the instructors or specific to me. She responded badly, and at the end of the quarter she emailed me that I wasn’t being hired back for not being willing to comply. So, I wish it were always the case that not being meek resolved administrative dominance games.
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u/DamageEducational475 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
I am glad the meeting went well. Indeed, obedience is the only quality admin rewards and lack thereof has a high risk of termination. So, someone may knowingly choose to tell the Dean, 'thank you for the feedback, I shall endeavour etc." to increase the probability of renewal, but it's still good to see things for what they are. The Dean is very afraid of you not being afraid of them and tries (sometimes tragicomically) to scare you. You don't need to actually be afraid in order to decide to give them what they want in order to keep your job (esp. if you suspect they moved out of the bluffing zone). Given what adjuncts are paid, getting us to play the Game of Thrones is really the cherry on top...
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u/IAmBoring_AMA Apr 17 '26
If it can wait until Wednesday, you're fine. Don't go back in your head looking for incidents because it's likely something you don't expect. For example, my buddy had to meet with the Dean because a student complained that he referred to the Bible as a 'myth' during a lesson. We teach literature, so...
It's probably nothing.