24 Jan Failure to Communicate

The student was irate.

“I wasn’t told what time we were supposed to meet, that’s why I was late. No one gave me that information”

She was referring to a visit to the Pompidou Center. I was the logistics coordinator for study-abroad in Paris for her university. I’d scheduled a group visit, but she was half an hour late and ended up missing it.

“That’s weird,” I said. “I sent out a message to everyone a couple of days ago with all the meeting information.”

“Well, I didn’t get it,” she said.

I checked my Sent mail. Her name was in the list of recipients. I pointed to it, feeling the small thrill of self-righteousness as I awaited her apology. I should have known better.

“Oh, you emailed it,” she said, in a tone that implied I might as well have strapped the information to a carrier pigeon. “I don’t really check my email that much. You should have Facebooked me.”

I was perplexed. It had simply never occurred to me to friend her on Facebook in order to send them information about excursions and activities.  Wasn’t that what email was for? Why complicate life by adding Facebook to the mix? She was equally puzzled by my reliance on email. Why would she check her email every day? I checked with the other students; they all used Facebook in the way that I was accustomed to using email, checking it a million times a day.

We were at an impasse, a technological divide. But this wasn’t even a generational divide, it was a microgenerational one.  I was seven or eight years older than the students– in digital terms, evidently a lifetime. Our differences became clear when my students started sending me friend requests on Facebook. I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to them. I didn’t want any uncomfortable work-life overlap. It wasn’t as though my life on Facebook was particularly titillating. My status updates mostly involve food.  So I didn’t have to worry about the students being privy to any lurid aspects of my life, such as they were.

But I still hesitated at combining elements online of my personal and professional life.  I remembered particularly the story of that poor student teacher in Pennsylvania, who had been on the verge of graduating until her university discovered that she had posted pictures of herself on MySpace as a “drunken pirate.” They accused her of promoting underage drinking and withheld her degree. This sort of story made me nervous. After all, my Facebook status does reference alcohol from time to time (sample update: “This bottle of white wine is warm. In other news, I found the olive oil in the fridge).  It’s no Drunken Pirate, but these days, who the hell knows where all the lines are drawn? This was the crux of the issue – social networking policies were vague, and while on the surface I didn’t see any issues with exchanging Facebook messages with students, I still didn’t want to take any risks.  So I told the students that I normally didn’t accept friend requests until after the semester was over, when they were back in the US, and our professional relationship was over. That way, we could keep in touch, I could see what they were up to and they could enjoy my witty musings about my missing olive oil.

And there was another reason that I was reluctant to add Facebook to the mix. In recent years, the line between work and leisure time had blurred. They all had my cellphone number to call in case of emergency (as did their parents, but that is another for another post). Program staff needed to be available for evening and weekend activities. I wanted to maintain a work/play balance and guarded my private life jealously as a result. If I went on Facebook, it was to catch up with what my actual friends back home were doing. I wanted to see photos of new babies, hear about weddings, see what I was missing from 6000 miles away. I didn’t want to read a student status update about Paris, or have them message me with a question about next week’s trip to Normandy. This would drag me back into the work sphere. And for sanity’s sake, I wanted to keep this sphere as separate as possible from my private sphere. Otherwise, I would find myself bolting awake at 3 am and heading to the computer, checking to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything urgent.

To the students, this attitude was ludicrously old-fashioned. We knew each, didn’t we? So why wouldn’t we be Facebook friends? Then they could ask me questions and send me messages whenever they wanted, and I could respond to them, and it would all be much more convenient. And wasn’t I being kind of paranoid?

We agreed to disagree. They checked their email frequently for activity updates, and I became Facebook friends with many of them once the program ended. A microgenerational compromise.

Emily Seftel Copyright(c) 2013 All Rights Reserved