Did my grad school orientation just make a wedding faux pas?

larrygaga · May 2015

Email says: 8am to 2pm

I get there at 7:30 so I have time to chit chat with new people and get a good seat. Mother fucking thing doesn't start until 8:30. The director said she wanted to be sure that we would all be on time.

This is a mother fucking grad school program. I would hope that you trust your students to either be on time or have a really good reason why they aren't.

bethsmiles · May 2015

That would piss me off. We were always expected to show up on time to shit at my grad school. Because we are adults and it's not anyone's job to make sure we can manage our time.

larrygaga · May 2015

Right? Every single person was there on time, there were no late people walking in. Everyone also looked around all confused and a few people at my table thought that the direct was just late and making us feel like it's our fault. IDK man

If you get into grad school, that says something about you. It might say that you are responsible and professional. SO YOU ARE ABLE TO READ THE FUCKING START TIME

VulgarGirl · May 2015

It's GRAD school. This means you've done elementry, high school, college, and now are in grad school. By this point you really should be able to tell time and figure your shit out.

esstee33 · May 2015

Uh, yeah, I'd be incredibly pissed. It's GRAD SCHOOL. Like, you're there on purpose. On really, really purpose. I should hope you know how to be on time for things by then.

JaniV123 · May 2015

I get it... I mean here we have a saying "Puertorrican time" which is to put things start at x hours because people legit start to arrive about half an hour later... literally it seems everyone has the same train of thought "I don't want to be the first person there, I will get there about 30 min after the stated start time so there will already be people there" and its the norm... like a social norm.

I hadn't seen it done or heard in the US. Everything I have always been to in the states has been timely which I actually like since I like to be punctual.

larrygaga · May 2015

Yeah, if you follow (insertculturehere) time and try to go to grad school in the US, you're going to have a bad time.

Unless you are following on time time, than by all means!

This ain't a party. It isn't weird to be the first person there. It's fucking school. Get out your books and shit and read if you get there early.

sarahufl · May 2015

larrygaga said:
Yeah, if you follow (insertculturehere) time and try to go to grad school in the US, you're going to have a bad time.

Unless you are following on time time, than by all means!

This ain't a party. It isn't weird to be the first person there. It's fucking school. Get out your books and shit and read if you get there early.

Truth. H's family is CONSTANTLY late. For everything. His parents showed up 15 minutes late to a first communion this weekend. Be on time for first communion.

jacques27 · May 2015

Ugh. Even when I attend conferences (a lot of them are only tangentially related to what I do, but they send me because one portion may be relevant), I'll get the original invite that will say something like 8-4. 75% of the time the conference doesn't start until 8:30 or 9:00 and once I view the itinerary I see the first 30-60 minute is coffee and pastries. I get that networking is a good thing - but I didn't just gulp down my coffee and breakfast and bust my butt in morning rush hour to get here 15 minutes early only to discover I have an hour and 15 minutes to kill making chit-chat with people that may not even be within my industry. Either tell me when the conference actually starts or give me the itinerary ahead of time so I know that I can show up at 8:40, still network a little bit, and not have had to rush around that morning.

KytchynWitche · May 2015

I would be SO pissed off.

I used to be an administrator/student liaison for a group of academies that offered business training (mostly project management). Any time I dealt with a student, I would tell them "The course begins promptly at 8.30." Plain and simple.

You are an adult, you are paying to attend the course, it's on you to be there on time. We usually had breakfast served at the venue from about 7, for anyone who showed up early, but there was no forced mingling/networking and definitely wasting time waiting for things to start, because we were dealing with adults!

allispain · May 2015

Whenever I run our new grad student orientations, about 20% of the students show up late. Granted, they tend to run on (insert Hispanic culture here) time. They get to stay late after the first session and have a chat with me about how that is not acceptable in our program, and they are expected to be places by the stated time.

That being said, I cannot imagine stating a start time and purposefully starting it later than that. No way.

arrippa · May 2015

Are they going to do that for your classes too? Sign up for a 8:00 am class but it really doesn't start until 8:30 am? If they don't trust you to make it to orientation on time then they must not think you can make it to class on time.

loveislouder · May 2015

My ex boyfriend was the heaviest sleeper - his alarm clock was on the louder volume all the time and he slept through it. His neighbours, on the other hand, would wake up. He would ALWAYS be late for class. Always. I never understood how you could pay $10,000 plus for school and then just be late.

charcoalandblush · May 2015

JaniV123 said:
I get it... I mean here we have a saying "Puertorrican time" which is to put things start at x hours because people legit start to arrive about half an hour later... literally it seems everyone has the same train of thought "I don't want to be the first person there, I will get there about 30 min after the stated start time so there will already be people there" and its the norm... like a social norm.

I hadn't seen it done or heard in the US. Everything I have always been to in the states has been timely which I actually like since I like to be punctual.

I went to a birthday party for a coworker's kid once. The email invite said 2:30pm. Another coworker and I carpooled and showed up at 2:45. He wasn't even home, and his wife was like still doing her hair/getting dressed/getting the kid dressed. We had no idea, but apparently in Ghana (where they're both from), no one shows up for like an hour or two until after the stated start time. The next guest didn't get there for probably another 45 minutes.

JaniV123 · May 2015

larrygaga said:
Yeah, if you follow (insertculturehere) time and try to go to grad school in the US, you're going to have a bad time.

Unless you are following on time time, than by all means!

This ain't a party. It isn't weird to be the first person there. It's fucking school. Get out your books and shit and read if you get there early.

I am always timely, I hate to be late to things. It is a pet peeve and I hate when I try to be on time and circumstances make me get there a few mins late.

Fi could care less if he gets there on time or not. Often times I either nag him till he is ready or tell him we are leaving 15-20 mins before I actually plan to leave,

JaniV123 · May 2015

charcoalandblush said:

JaniV123 said:
I get it... I mean here we have a saying "Puertorrican time" which is to put things start at x hours because people legit start to arrive about half an hour later... literally it seems everyone has the same train of thought "I don't want to be the first person there, I will get there about 30 min after the stated start time so there will already be people there" and its the norm... like a social norm.

I hadn't seen it done or heard in the US. Everything I have always been to in the states has been timely which I actually like since I like to be punctual.

I went to a birthday party for a coworker's kid once. The email invite said 2:30pm. Another coworker and I carpooled and showed up at 2:45. He wasn't even home, and his wife was like still doing her hair/getting dressed/getting the kid dressed. We had no idea, but apparently in Ghana (where they're both from), no one shows up for like an hour or two until after the stated start time. The next guest didn't get there for probably another 45 minutes.

WHAT? that is insane... here it really is usually 30 min- 1 hour tops but 2 hours.. damn

But yeah I hate that cultural shit, I feel like it reflects poorly on people.

sarahufl · May 2015

We grew up Catholic. If a wedding invite says 3pm for a church wedding, you show up at 2:45, find your seat and the wedding starts promptly at 3.

My parents were invited to an Indian wedding a few years back that said 2pm. So they got there at 1:45 and literally not A SOUL was around. The flowers hadn't even been set up. So they had to mill around for over an hour waiting for people to arrive. I think the wedding started around 4.

levioosa · May 2015

I would say that it's not so much a wedding faux pas, as a "don't be a douche setting fake times." Everyone in my program is paranoid and shows up thirty minutes early. We're all pissed right now because one of our teachers is making us do mandatory handwritten detailed outlines for 1000 pages a week. Like, we didn't fucking get here because we don't know how to study, and it's a waste of our time.

However, there is a culture around where I live where family members will actually get a different timed invitation, because they always show up 1-2 hours later than the actual start time. It's against etiquette, but I can honestly understand. We've started telling SO's sister different start times because she's always 45min to 1.5 hours late for events, and his family refuses to order the food before she gets there.

KytchynWitche · May 2015

I get it... I mean here we have a saying "Puertorrican time" which is to put things start at x hours because people legit start to arrive about half an hour later... literally it seems everyone has the same train of thought "I don't want to be the first person there, I will get there about 30 min after the stated start time so there will already be people there" and its the norm... like a social norm.

I hadn't seen it done or heard in the US. Everything I have always been to in the states has been timely which I actually like since I like to be punctual.

I went to a birthday party for a coworker's kid once. The email invite said 2:30pm. Another coworker and I carpooled and showed up at 2:45. He wasn't even home, and his wife was like still doing her hair/getting dressed/getting the kid dressed. We had no idea, but apparently in Ghana (where they're both from), no one shows up for like an hour or two until after the stated start time. The next guest didn't get there for probably another 45 minutes.

Seriously, this is not even limited to Ghana. It's the whole continent, and it frustrates me hugely. Thankfully most of the people I have had to deal with were professionals who understood that the world runs on GMT and not "African time", but it is such a very real thing here that these clocks actually exist:

"African time" is such a very real thing here that we even had one of our soap operas make a big deal of it in an episode (like an after school special type thing). One of the main characters, an African businessman (possible mobster), threw a hissy fit because some of his employees were late, and said "My heart may be African, but my watch is Japanese".

/thread hijack

Did my grad school orientation just make a wedding faux pas?

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