The next time you need to email a professor, think before you send: be brief, be kind, be thankful, be smart.
Taylor Steinbeck
@taysteinMD
Like a drifty snow crystal wafting through the chilled air lifting a thousand fellow flakes, no two professors are alike. Each has their own individual quirks, teaching styles and expectations. A healthy dose of student-teacher communication often leads to success in the classroom.
The simplest, most time-efficient method of contacting a professor is undoubtedly email. Though this technique requires only a few strikes of the keyboard for expression and a mere click of the mouse to send, email should not be handled with an absent mind.
Email is a form of business communication, after all, and professors expect their students to treat it as such.
One thing every professor can agree on is that you should always check the syllabus before asking any questions. If you ask a question you already have the answer to, it makes you look bad and wastes your professor’s time.
Another way to respect professors’ time is to ensure your email is easy to read. Ethnic studies assistant professor Jane Lehr advises students to “use a subject line that is specific and includes the course number.”
Psychology professor Laura Freberg elaborated saying, “(Relevant subject titles) help me prioritize my email tasks. If it is a question about the midterm, and the midterm is tomorrow, I’ll look at that right away. If it’s a funny YouTube video about narcoleptic dogs, I know it can wait a bit.”
To help guarantee a professor’s attention, you should use your Cal Poly email address, civil and environmental engineering professor Garrett Hall said.
“Off-campus email addresses are not verified, so by writing to them, faculty are potentially creating privacy issues,” Hall said. Freberg added, “When I see ‘superhottie@gmail.com,’ this does not lead me to assume that you are a serious student.”
If there’s one aspect of email that professors hope for their students to understand, it is showing respect. Many professors emphasize the importance of students portraying themselves as well-mannered and polite over email. Respect goes beyond simply throwing in a meager “please” and “thank you.”
It means “salutation and formality,” sociology professor Ryan Alaniz said.
“If a student is not formal and serious, I do not take them or their email seriously,” Alaniz said.
A major issue that several professors have with students emailing them is with the lack of respect when it comes to addressing them properly. Use the terms “professor” or “Dr.” unless the instructor tells you otherwise, biological sciences professor Emily Taylor said.
“It is especially common for us young female professors to be called ‘Mrs.’ or ‘Miss,'” Taylor said. “Every time this happens to a female professor who has toiled away at her Ph.D. for years, an angel dies in heaven.”
To attend office hours or not to attend office hours is a question that rings through a number of students’ heads after class. If it is a simple question or comment, most professors would prefer email. However, some content is not easy to discuss over email and certain complicated concepts are best taught in person, philosophy professor Francisco Fernflores said.
For similar reasons, some professors, such as animal science professor Jaymie Noland, would “always prefer office hours” to speak with students.
Professors might grow weary from answering hundreds upon hundreds of student emails each day, but that doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate a complimentary email every once and awhile from a student recognizing their efforts.
“After you graduate, don’t be shy about telling a professor how much a class you took with them helped prepare you for real experiences in your career or in life,” history professor Matthew Hopper said. “Those sorts of encouraging messages are what keep us going during tough times.”
In other words, if you have something nice to say to your professor, say it. Ego boosts are always welcome. Always spell check emails, and do not underestimate the power of good presentation.
With the cyber-world interweaving itself so deeply into our physical reality, a courteous email is the modern equivalent of a solid handshake.
“Psychological science has shown repeatedly that there is a very strong impact of negative information on first impressions,” Freberg said. “So even if your email is 95 percent positive, the 5 percent negative is what your professor will remember later.”
Professors don’t try to be unreasonable by setting such high standards in regards to email. They simply attempt to groom their students into proper communicators who will go out into the “real world” and conduct themselves respectably.
“Overall, I try to encourage email habits that match the expectations our students will encounter concerning email use either in their jobs after they graduate or in the pursuit of advanced degrees,” Fernflores said.
The next time you need to email a professor, think before you send: be brief, be kind, be thankful, be smart.
Editor’s note: It is Mustang Daily policy, as guided by Associated Press style, to refer to professionals as doctors only when they hold a terminal degree in a medical field.