> Isn't it just weird that a university is using this language at all? A lot of their messages seem so unempathetic and unprofessional. The spirit of academia has always been about being open to ideas and embracing open standards from my experience, too. Something feels off.
It might just be a cultural thing, or the perception on the behalf of the staff, that this person is creating problems for them, where none should exist. I'm from Latvia, which is right next to Lithuania - most of the correspondence I've received in a Latvian university has also been a bit on the terse side of things. It also mirrors the attitude that some of the staff can have, some take pride in failing students, not really helping out with the subjects much, some are genuinely overworked. Of course, there were also plenty of genuinely good staff members.
For example, I remember reaching out to a professor to explain that I'm attending a software development conference and whether I could re-schedule the date on which I'd take an exam (maybe to take it together with those who would later re-take it after not passing). The answer was simply: "No." with a typo in that single word response, somehow. Also, I recall the local IT department sending me a fairly accusatory message about me doing port scanning, when I was testing out OpenVAS against my own VPS (a single node). Nothing wrong with asking questions, but maybe there's no reason to start with an accusatory tone and demanding an explanation. Oh well.
As another example, I recently had a postal package come in that I couldn't redirect to a package machine for pickup, for some reason. So, I wanted to have it delivered to my house (a service that's offered) by the postal worker. I reached out to the customer service by e-mail and just got a copy paste from the FAQ, with my question about the delivery going completely unaddressed. When I called them on the phone, the person there was nice and helped me figure everything out in a few minutes and arranged for the delivery.
People can be nice in person (or when talking over the phone) or when they know you, but for whatever reason many of the people are less nice online. There are fewer pleasantries in general, people typically get to the point more quickly, or might seem cold to someone from US or similar countries. That said, you don't really open the comments sections of news sites over here, unless you want to see something mocking or with profanity.
I'm really not sure why that is. It should probably be better somehow.
It might just be a cultural thing, or the perception on the behalf of the staff, that this person is creating problems for them, where none should exist. I'm from Latvia, which is right next to Lithuania - most of the correspondence I've received in a Latvian university has also been a bit on the terse side of things. It also mirrors the attitude that some of the staff can have, some take pride in failing students, not really helping out with the subjects much, some are genuinely overworked. Of course, there were also plenty of genuinely good staff members.
For example, I remember reaching out to a professor to explain that I'm attending a software development conference and whether I could re-schedule the date on which I'd take an exam (maybe to take it together with those who would later re-take it after not passing). The answer was simply: "No." with a typo in that single word response, somehow. Also, I recall the local IT department sending me a fairly accusatory message about me doing port scanning, when I was testing out OpenVAS against my own VPS (a single node). Nothing wrong with asking questions, but maybe there's no reason to start with an accusatory tone and demanding an explanation. Oh well.
As another example, I recently had a postal package come in that I couldn't redirect to a package machine for pickup, for some reason. So, I wanted to have it delivered to my house (a service that's offered) by the postal worker. I reached out to the customer service by e-mail and just got a copy paste from the FAQ, with my question about the delivery going completely unaddressed. When I called them on the phone, the person there was nice and helped me figure everything out in a few minutes and arranged for the delivery.
People can be nice in person (or when talking over the phone) or when they know you, but for whatever reason many of the people are less nice online. There are fewer pleasantries in general, people typically get to the point more quickly, or might seem cold to someone from US or similar countries. That said, you don't really open the comments sections of news sites over here, unless you want to see something mocking or with profanity.
I'm really not sure why that is. It should probably be better somehow.