From PuffHo we have a demonstration video (apparently posted and narrated by a University teacher) on how not to email a professor. As you’ll see below, the email is an mashup of several student emails sent to a math professor in Michigan, and the name of the student is made up. But it’s pretty much the kind of email that all of us get at one time or another. (I’m quite familiar with these presumptuous emails, as well as the numerous requests for exemptions, especially around exam time when ageing relatives seem to die. . . )
PuffHo‘s notes:
“This ‘LOL’? You and I are not in a relationship yet where we can just chuckle and laugh about things…”
Yes, any students planning to write an email to their lecturers might want to watch this video first. It was posted by Marcus Anderson, a maths professor in Michigan – and it’s a handy guide to not using text-speak in formal situations.
And before you go thinking that Anderson is publicly shaming the student: ‘cartmanrulez99’ a fictional creation, based on “two or three poor emails put together,” explains Anderson on YouTube. “I would never post an email of a student to the Internet nor would I suggest anyone else ever doing that.”
Moreover, he adds, he’s not youth-bashing. “In my opinion, each and every generation is smarter than the previous generation,” he writes. “I have seen that first-hand in my twenty years of teaching. If you think that there were no dumb people in the past, think again.”
If you want to know how to email faculty, wikiHow has a good guide.
I’m curious how common this kind of thing is.
Erf. Checkbox.
It’s pretty common.
I used to teach English in a couple of different middle and high schools 7-9 years ago. Forget writing e-mails this way, some of my students would write their papers this way.
In fact, I had to issue an F once to a student for her work on a writing assignment because, amongst other things, she used the letters UR as an abbreviation for your. Her mother angrily demanded a meeting with myself and the asst. principal in response to the failing grade.
When she asked me why I failed her daughter and I gave the above example, the mother dismissively told me and the asst. principal “that’s how people talk now.”
Yep, got to maintain those high standards, mom!
The fatuity of some people is beyond belief, but apparently that’s just a figure of speech. The thing I detest most here is using and accepting stupidity as an excuse.
If you’re the professor, can’t you just say “this is not a democracy” and throw the obtuse people out? That’s what I luckily get to do in my work — and submit to if done to me. A method best not used too often, of course.
That’s ultimately what happened. I told the mother that I wasn’t in a position to negotiate and that her daughter’s writing didn’t meet academic standards. (the one and only time that the No Child Left Behind standards were anything other than a problem in my teaching career) The student got the message though and her writing did improve. In point of fact she graduated from Florida State in the Spring with a degree in Nursing.
That sounds like a reasonably happy end. And you apparently did your student a big favor by insisting on certain academic standards. I believe it’s very seldom that people criticise their old teachers and mentors for being too demanding. Usually they take pride in such memories, even the bitter ones. And disrespect the teachers who let them off too easily.
whoops – just lost a post…
I’ve had obnoxious parents like that. I taught a 10th grade programming class a while back and one little bugger kept removing everyone’s mouse balls. When his parents came in to complain that I was picking on hiim (also for asking him to remove his hat for O Canada) they said that they’d have me know that their little angel was brilliant with computers: he had even ordered his cellphone online! oy, veh…the apple does not fall far from the tree…
That’s about the only thing I miss about teaching is the kids. And the hilarious stories you get to tell when you’re out drinking with friends.
I had a student once write a short story about Barack Obama and Dick Cheney teaming up to fight Osama Bin Laden and Godzilla in New York City with lasers and karate. It is still the single most brilliant thing I’ve ever read in my life.
I really miss the kids, too. Lotsa fun, most of the time. They keep you young ( if they don’t kill you:-) If these kinds of parents just stayed out of it…
Sounds like the US version of these hilarious Russian comics.
F for incorrect use of a reflexive pronoun. 😁
/@
I’m always glad when someone else beats me to the pedantry…
Moi, aussi🐯
I can’t believe the emailer would bug his/her professor for such things. Poke someone in class if you’ve missed class and if you’ve missed a math class for this long, you have A LOT to catch up on.
The only time I bugged my professors (and I would see them during their office hours because we didn’t bother with email as it was fairly new) it was for discussing essay topics and we were told to do so. The other time, I was in a car accident and missed and exam so I phoned my professor and he was nice enough to let me write it in his office during spring break.
My friend’s husband is a math professor and he has had students throw tantrums in his office because they didn’t like the mark. Yikes! Time to grow up a little; too bad you had to learn to do it on the prof’s time.
I was at university long before email existed. (I got to work on some of the first PCs that could do something other than green text on a TV screen, whoo-hoo!)
We approached the Prof. directly and respectfully in person, generally. And people expected everyone to suck it up and figure things out (or find a TA or fellow student to ask). It’s university afterall, not high school! Figure it out! The hand-holding stopped at high school and your parents.
I wonder whether kindergarten graduation ceremonies and that sort of thing helps to foster the belief among some at a very early age an overinflated opinion of their own abilities and a sense of entitlement to praise and attention just for managing to enter the next year of life.
Entitlement is deep in grades K-6 in America. Parents insist their Billy or Suzy is gifted and talented just because they can read Harry Potter at an early age. What is worse is that gives some kids a twisted ideas on how unique they really are when they are. Managing this systematic artificial barrier breaking to genius level is threatening the work ethic of a lot of kids.
I have a Kindergarten Diploma I got when I graduated Kindergarten. Many a time at various jobs, I thought about displaying it proudly for the LOLz.
I’ll bet it has a gold star, and maybe some stickers on it:-)
No this was the 70s. We didn’t get stickers or stars. I think it has kids playing on it as the background or something.
Let me guess…mimeographed?
b&
No it was fancier than that but I do have fond memories of what we called “dittos”. It sucked when assignments got really blurry because it was copied to many times but it was nice to smell. The teacher would hand the out, instructing us not to sniff them if they were fresh off the machine, but as soon as her back was turned, I’d inhale the whole sheet. Maybe this is why I can’t do math.
It would explain a wee bit more than just your math skills, my dear….
b&
Oh well, the smell was worth it! I also grew up on a highway when lead gas was used!
I hated the smell!! ( the big book they put out on all the TIFF films smells the same. The house reeked for about a week.) Did you also eat/sniff the glue, Diana- lol?
I may have told this story, but when my parents lived in Nigeria my little brother was really into model airplanes ( he was living there, i was in Calif in college). Mom came back to the States for a few weeks and bought a bunch of model airplane glue to take back. The customs/ immigration people gave her a hell of a time about all that glue, despite her diplomatic passport
No I never ate glue but I sniffed magic markers as a kid until the ruined them by making them smell terrible.
Well, that’s nothing. When I was in grade school I remember a few times when a blob of mercury was passed around from hand to hand. We also X-rayed our feet every time we went to a shoe store, of course.
I’ve heard of those foot X-ray machines but somehow never saw one. Must have been overseas.
My dad played with mercury in class too & went to the local shoe store regularly to have his feet x-rayed. He claims it didn’t hurt him, but I’m the sucker that probably inherited all his messed up DNA! 🙂
One of my friends used to go play with the shoe machine when she was a kid. She later got thyroid cancer, and it’s entirely possible it was due to that exposure–the way you stand over it. She’s okay now, though the thyroid had to be removed.
“One of my friends used to go play with the shoe machine when she was a kid. She later got thyroid cancer…”
Whoa. Glad she recovered!
Between things like that and–how does the saying go?–DDT in our fat and Strontium-90 in our bones, IIRC–it’s a wonder so many of us are still here. Guess it helps to have a gazillion Boomers to start with.
Merilee, from the dribs & drabs you throw in, you seem to have led a most interesting life. 🙂
Diana, I’m not sure anything can explain you–you’re one of a kind. 😀
My mom was exposed to strontium-90 from nuclear tests in the south pacific. I forgot I also have those shit genes.
With any luck those genes might cancel each other out…
Yup, Diane, I was “blessed” ( groan) with a really far-flung childhood, and missed out on the thrills of getting sprayed with DDT behind the truck and having my feet X-rayed back home:-). Except for Rob Ford, living near Toronto gas been relatively quiet. Where do you live?
LOL.
Doubtless, if the professor responds to this email as it deserves, he will be pilloried in student evaluations and at ratemyprofessor.com as being an asshole.
I’d say using your university email address is the number 1 tip, followed by checking if its all online anyway.
However, I’m not bothered about Dear Dr Whatsit or Hi or G’day or whatever as I just tune the first line out.
Mind you, we’re quite lucky here as we are postgrad only, which makes a hell of a difference to the minimum maturity level of students.
The emails I’ve had recently were all perfectly valid complaints about our online stuff.
Good students have immortal grandparents. I am using this observation to encourage my grandchildren to study their tuchuses off.
Rha! “do to” instead of “due to”.
The prof didn’t even spot it. Now I have a nagging feeling of incompleteness at the missed snark opportunity.
All that’s missing is a its/it’s and a “could care less”, with which the masterpiece would be complete.
🙂
The examples on wikihow are good ones. But the amazing thing is that they are simply:
1. Common courtesy
2. Basic grasp of written English
3. Basic ability to communicate
The fact that so many young students fail in these most basic social endeavors is appalling.
I refuse to write in text-gobbledegook-crapspeak, even while texting (which is very rare anyway). Or especially in email.
People: Email is a permanent written record of your thoughts. Make it count. Don’t look like a rude, solvenly ignoramus. Unless of course you want people to know that you are a rude, slovenly ignoramus.
I think txtspk is legitimate when texting, specially on older phones with the multiple letters on each key, and of course the very small screen, it definitely does save time. Particularly for old luddites like me who have to laboriously enter it letter by letter.
Seriously, to type that paragraph above out in full on a cellphone would take me five minutes, and if my message is something like ‘Will meet u at jct hwy 23 and mcilroy rd at 2.35’ then I’m likely to be under some time pressure to send it and the content is far more important than the eloquence of the wording.
Bt obvsly i wdn’t use txtspk in a proper email. LOL. [vbeg] B)
This poem should be required reading by students:
DID I MISS ANYTHING?
Tom Wayman
From: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.
Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren’t here
sub
I get similar emails at some point in most of the classes I teach and I just send the requested information to the student. Who am I to put a value judgement on someone else’s request for information, particularly when it will take me very little time to respond positively. In this case just hit respond and then drag and drop the needed documents and you are done. Why the need to create enemies when something is so easy to deal with.
Who’s creating enemies? I shake my head when I get this stuff and then reply professionally and politely. And yes, we all put value judgements on people’s communications–that’s what a good, well-written resume is about. Important emails should also be written with care.
It’s fine if YOU don’t judge a student by how they write you, but don’t flaunt it and act like you’re superior to the rest of us.
My apologies. That is not what I intended, but rereading what I wrote I can certainly see what you are saying.
I just feel that you tube videos like this are not that helpfull.
Those types of students may be the same ones who send similar emails to me as job applicants. They get a curt response and zero consideration for an interview.
I have a theory, which is mine, that a good approximation of a person’s IQ can be estimated based on a sampling of everyday writing.
There are certainly exceptions where otherwise-smart people just don’t give a flying fuck and rite shit dey don care bout notin not even make sense 2u or noone…but I’ll be damned if I can think of any dumb people who write well.
So, by all means. If you want me to think you’re an idiot, write like one.
(And, if you really want to impress me, demonstrate that you not only can write well but that you can pull off idiomatic caricatures with the flair of a Twain.)
Cheers,
b&
“(And, if you really want to impress me, demonstrate that you not only can write well but that you can pull off idiomatic caricatures with the flair of a Twain.)”
Like you just did? 8)
Srsly, it impressed me.
Thanks, but I’m not fit to fill Twain’s inkwell….
b&
No one should be asked to put up with unreasonable content, but conventions are another matter. I’m not put off with Hey as a greeting, because I’ve received it from the most eloquent and courteous of student. It’s just how people start electronic communication, and I am disinclined to “correct” these people.
In my opinion, each and every generation is smarter than the previous generation
That, however, is extremely unlikely, because it would mean that the people who built the pyramids would have been vegetables.
The pyramids were built by aliens.
I think I might have mentioned this here before, but when I was in high school, I had a chemistry teacher who claimed that the pyramids proved that Egypt had some sort of high tech society with super-advanced machinery (like computers and anti-gravity devices).
No joke, that’s what he really believed. Being a teenager, and therefore not realizing the futility of it, I tried poking holes in his logic by pointing out that no traces or records of such technology existed, and asked why none of Egypt’s neighbors ever reported seeing such things.
When I was in High School, there was a “documentary” on TV saying that the pyramids were built using levitation. The next day my math teacher mentioned the show and said, “Well, I can’t see any other way they could have done it.”
This was the 1970s, in case you couldn’t guess.
That probably was an influence on my teacher as well.
I’m surprised that letter wasn’t written in Comic Sans.
Maybe that allowing these kind of emails could stimulate students to write more and more like that.
Make a scene on something that is not such a big issue, and you will stimulate many professors to start dismissing real concerns of students.
Ignore what must be ignored.