Want to be treated like an adult? Start acting like one.
My grandmother is 98 and currently in the hospital. My mother has warned me that she may not bounce back from it this time. In the event that she does pass, my mom wants the family — my sister, my dad and me— to fly up for the funeral one weekend.
I hate flying. I HATE flying. When I expressed this to my mom, she told me I would “just have to get over it.” The funeral will be nine hours away by car, which I don’t mind driving on my own, and I’m sure I could fit it into my schedule.
I’m financially dependent on my mom until I graduate. She bought me my new used car, and everything I’ve ever needed. She is a great mom! But I’m conflicted. I truly don’t want to fly, but refusing to fly means starting a fight with my mom.
How do I express myself and hold my ground, while at the same time showing her that I respect her, love her and appreciate her? I know we should always listen to our mothers, but when am I old enough to adamantly disagree with her? Is it when I pay for my rent myself?
Dear Miss Manners:
Family roles change over time, a fact often brought out when facing illness and death. The disagreement you are having follows a no-doubt familiar pattern: Your mother tells you to eat your vegetables, and you do not want to.
The way not to be
Gentle reader:
treated like a child is not to act — or in this case, think — like one. Your mother’s mother is dying, and your mother needs your comfort and help. Assuming you are there in time to provide it, how you get there is your responsibility, as an adult — not hers.
Ask your mother when she wants you to arrive; if she asks how you are going to get there, assure her that she does not need to worry about that. Miss Manners notes that this is both the best way to help your mother, and to establish that you are now the decision-maker on some things.
I am a professor and the director of a small graduate program at a large university. Each year, we select a group of applicants who, on top of admittance, receive a teaching assistantship. This comes with a tuition waiver and a stipend, together amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. Even smaller groups are offered merit fellowships of several thousand dollars.
I personally send notifications via email to these applicants, give them a decision deadline and ask them to send me a note in response. In other words, they do not hear word of these offers in a bureaucratic form letter from an anonymous university official.
I am shocked, every year, that many of the recipients simply ignore the offer. I receive no acknowledgment of the offer, let alone an expression of gratitude. Their silence communicates to me that they feel enormously entitled.
Clearly, they have not been mentored correctly. After the decision date, I send follow-up emails to the applicants from whom I have yet to hear a word,
Dear Miss Manners:
letting them know that the decision date has passed, that the offer has been retracted and that we have moved to our waitlist.
I am tempted to add a line saying that I would have appreciated an acknowledgment of the offer. I am even tempted to offer some unsolicited professional advice: that it is good form to acknowledge professional opportunities and offers, even if one is going to decline them. After all, this is not just a matter of etiquette, but also a matter of burning professional bridges.
I know that good manners dictate that one does not point out the rudeness of others. But I am wondering if my role as a professor offers me some leeway here, as it is my job to teach students the ways of the profession. Does this extend to students who are not my own?
While these adult students should clearly know better, they are obviously in need of some guidance. Miss Manners is loath to employ the overused phrase “a teaching moment,” but that is what this is.
Miss Manners suggests: “In the future, it may behoove you to acknowledge the receipt of any monetary or positional prospects. Even if you are unable to take advantage of them now, surely you would not want to give the impression that they — or the generous people who recommended you for them — will never be of use.”
Gentle reader:
To send a question to the Miss Manners team of Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin, go to missmanners .com or write them c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.