Is Cancel the New Normal?

I had fully intended to write a post this week on academics working in an online world (to follow up on my last post on academics and fake news), but something else is more pressing on my mind and is certainly related. Clearly, social and dating culture among students has changed in a tinder/bumble world such that when a better date or social offer comes along, people have no trouble cancelling on the first offer. This is documented in many contexts. Has this virus spread to academia? I wonder if our culture is changing in both the university environment and life such that cancelling (or to say it more glibly, flaking) has become the new norm. Sometimes cancelling just means not showing up to a conference, or a meeting, or to class. Sometimes it can come in the form of tardiness for an appointment or quitting a job altogether that you have committed for in advance. All of this is often done lightly and with little remorse

I have seen more of this cancelling phenomenon in the last three years or so than I ever have in my academic or professional career. My colleagues and I often complain about how often our research assistants, students, and others cancel/flake/drop out of whatever commitment they have made to us. I have told colleagues and people out of my field that I regularly receive student assignments a week after they are due, and people in Generation X are shocked, but I have grown accustomed to this. I actually build in a week or two of a cushion in case a student drops out of the task (cancels) or is late on a research assignment (not for a graded one, there are obviously repercussions for those).  This one is just sad, but I even often ask two or three research assistants to do the same research because I’m not sure that one or more will cancel on me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I try to be an empathetic professor and person. I am very sorry when students are ill, or their car breaks down, or a student has a family emergency. These things happen to all of us. In fact, in full disclosure I have had to cancel two or three conferences that I committed to myself due to Zika (I was pregnant and couldn’t travel to this part of Florida), passport issues, and newborn difficulties. And even though I felt bad cancelling, half of the panels I was supposed to speak with had to cancel as well. I think there is a growing culture of acceptance of people cancelling. I think on panels now, for instance, I will invite a few extra sometimes, just because I know some will cancel. And I wonder why this is happening. Is it because of the ever growing online nature of communications? It is so much easier to email a professor to tell them that you can’t turn in an assignment then to go to their office and have a talk about it. It is also easier for a professor to cancel on a colleague over email than to call and have to deal in person with the response. And what about cancelling on jobs. This is one that concerns me more than any. I have seen and heard about an unusually high number of students cancelling jobs they have committed to after receiving a better offer or opportunity. Maybe I am just focusing on the exceptions and not the rule, but I would be interested to hear others’ thoughts on whether cancelling seems to be the new normal.