Let me quickly preempt everybody whose first reaction is, “Why are you wasting your time worrying about this?” The answer is that it’s irritating me, and there’s nothing I can do about the fact that it irritates me (which is why I’m posting it under this goal). The fact that it irritates me may not speak very well of me, but there it is. So I have to figure out what I’m going to do about it.

One of my students this semester calls me by a first name that is somewhat similar to mine but is not, in fact, correct. This is a surprisingly difficult situation, because:

The “right” form of address, according to this institution’s culture, is emphatically “Dr. Lastname.” I’m not a huge fan of undergraduates addressing me by my first name, but I think that correcting them would just answer rudeness with rudeness, so I always let it slide. If they ask what I prefer, I go with the Dr. thing, and I thank them for asking.

But in this situation? I’m stymied. If I tell him he’s got my first name wrong and give him the correct one, I’m implicitly saying that that’s how I’d like to be addressed. Which it isn’t. But if I correct him with “Dr. Lastname”...see aforementioned rudeness. This person irritates me in other ways, so I’m deathly afraid I’ll snap and snark at him one day. ARGH.

[UPDATE] Ok, he came into my office one day (not during office hours) and did it again, so I was pissed off enough to say, “[Student], I’m not sure why you’re calling me by my first name, but that’s not even it.” And then he peeked outside at the name on my door and corrected himself. And everything seems ok. I think this student is the type who doesn’t take hints and prefers explicit correction, so this was probably better than hinting/seething.