Confession time: I used to be deathly afraid of my professors (and teachers). What?
I also used to be one of those kids that thought teachers lived at school all the time and didn’t do anything else. What a shock it was when 6-year-old me saw a teacher outside of school for the first time and realized that teachers are human beings just like me.
Cyberspace: the final frontier. These are the enterprises of the modern student. Her undergraduate mission: to explore strange new syllabi, to seek out help and resources, to boldly go where many students have gone before…
…Her professor’s UTmail+ inbox.
Okay okay, maybe e-mailing a professor isn’t quite as exciting or high stakes as hiking through Andoria, but it can feel like a monolithic task. I have heard all sorts of horror stories—everything from sending a prof the wrong e-mail to accidentally using a text abbreviation!
Shudder.
After three years of interacting with professors through various mediums, I think I am starting to get the hang of it.
Here is what I always keep in mind when I’m drafting an e-mail:
