Tags: murphyslaw | teaching

I am convinced that some students have this.  What does it mean, you ask?  It's a neurological disorder that causes students to selectively ignore certain words.   For example:

What I post:
Please be sure to email the staff mailing list, not my personal email address. That way, someone can answer your questions if I can not respond in a timely fashion. Please come to office hours to get answers to technical questions instead of sending them by email.

What they read:
Please be sure to email ... my personal email address. That way ... I can ... respond ... to technical questions ... by email.

Strangely, it seems to mostly affect words related to deadlines and other important details.  I have formulated this as the SRD corollary to Murphy's Law:

"The relevance of the word is directly proportional to the likelihood that it will be ignored.  If one paragraph contains all pertinent details, the entire paragraph will be ignored."

Ah, college!