“hey professor i dont think ill be able to make it to class tomorrow, do u think u could email me the reading and whatever notes u go over, also i will not be able to make it to the final for personal reasons, when do u think i could come into your office and make it up, would summer vacation work for you”
“hey dr x everyone in my family just died like right now so i won’t be in class tomorrow”
“dr x i have six grandmas and they’re all in the hospital so i wont be in class tomorrow”
“hey professor i have 97 grandmothers, all dead, i will not be in class for the rest of the semester”
“hey professor idk if you noticed but i wasnt in class this week, i had a thing, did i miss anything important”
“Hey professor! I’m attaching my final essay here. [Intentionally corrupted file attached so professor has to respond “Could you please resend?” twelve hours later, during which time the student has actually written said essay] Let me know if you have any questions!”
“Hey Dr. X, I actually have three other assignments due the same day as your assignment, and your class is the least important to me, so can I just not do it, or do it late or something? Thanks in advance!!!”
“hey professor can you meet sometime this week to answer some questions? none of your office hours work for me, can you pick another time?”
“Hi professor X! Before the exam tomorrow, do you mind answering these 47 very specific questions I have about the material that I’ve been meaning to ask you all semester? If you do not help me I will fail and lose my scholarship and probably die, thank you in advance.”
“hey I just realized that since I didnt show up for the midterm or do any of the homework im probably failing the class, is there any extra credit i can do between now and tomorrow to make sure I get at least an A?”
“hey professor!!! noticed that im getting a D- in the class, any chance you could make that a B+, otherwise i wont be able to graduate this spring and my entire life will be literally ruined forever. ps i probably won’t be in class tomorrow my hands are kind of cramping up”
“hey professor how have you been, good, good i liked taking your class seven years ago, idk if you remembered me, it was a crazy early morning class so i slept in a bunch but when i was there you were good as hell at professoring, do you think you could write me a letter of recommendation? i will not tell you what it is for, like a job or grad school or whatever, you have to guess. also i will not tell you the deadline. thank you in advance.”
[Special thanks to Anne Helen Peterson and Shrill Cosby for joke assistance]
Tags: college life, dr. mary albright, emails, humor, sometimes grandmas actually do die i am not suggesting that can’t happen, the professor-student relationship
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My friend sent several emails ending with 'Lots of love' and several kisses because she was in a hurry and forgot exactly who she was emailing.
ALL OF THIS IS WHY I spend quality time teaching students how to write emails. And like, I don't even care about so many things. Just email courtesy.
Me too! I got one of them YESTERDAY and wrote back so sweetly! And have not gotten a reply.
Were you teaching at Quantico?
This dilemma is why I start emails with things like "Good morning-" and then just roll into the body of the email…
I've definitely thought the bullet point comment, but I'd never actually dare send that email…
(Once I've done the fun researchy bits and put together a very through outline, I'd like the paper to write itself, thanks. They never do, though…)
I once asked a professor if I could do my final presentation first, because I had just been diagnosed with pneumonia (and had just walked from the doctor's office to school) and wanted to go home afterwards. He looked at me and said, "Why are we even having this conversation in person? Go HOME!"
So I walked home, and didn't move for a week (Sadly also Spring Break) except to take drugs and periodically bless the name of the professor in question.
I just sent out one of these responses to a request for a recommendation, actually. In it, I asked for:
– specific position applying for and address/contact to send it to
– deadline for the recommendation
– resume showing work both before and after graduating and important highlights of performance in school
– transcript (informal is fine)
– anything in particular the applicant hopes I will point out about them or my experience with them as my student
Good idea to compile these!
as a TA at a large public we HAD to have notes. but they did not say much. now i work at a tiny place, so, if a student is lying, i can easily ask and find out. Also, it's way easier to believe people.
One student told me her horse had died and she'd spent all day digging a hole in which to bury him so hadn't been able to finish her assignment.
In a course where students were required to post weekly reflection pieces, one waited until the end then uploaded them all at once, with faked time and date stamps that she'd copied off other people's posts. She'd also typed her name over theirs but forgot to change the attached hyperlinks that led to their email addresses.
I used to do this kind of thing and now I'm a professor and it doesn't fool me even a little bit and also I don't care of your paper is 4 lines short of my requested 5 pages.
The most confused I have ever seen a professor was when I came to office hours to take him up on his in-class offer to go over our essay exams and find out what could have been stronger.* He pointed out spots where I should have listed citations (something I've never been asked to do before or since on an undergrad in-class no-open-text exam, but okey-dokey!), but his wariness was palpable.
I couldn't quite figure it out until he finally said "Listen, you did fine but that's a B essay. I can't change your grade." I responded "Oh, I never thought you'd alter the grade! I want to do better on the next exam. And now I know to include citations from the class texts next time. This is really helpful, thanks."
His shock told me a lot about how most students approach conversations about exams, grades, and improvement.
*I GOT A B ON ONE ESSAY FOR AN OVERALL A- ON THE EXAM
CAN YOU IMAGINE
OH THE SHAME
omg all my emails to my professors were like
"Dear Professor X,
I hope you are well. I was wondering if we could schedule a meeting during your office hours. I just wanted to make sure I had some dedicated time to speak to you one-on-one. I know exactly where your office is and what your hours are. Would 10:30 be convenient for you? If not, let me know. My schedule is pretty flexible, so whatever works for you works for me!
Sincerely,
Lauren"
and then the response I'd get back would be like, no salutations, all lowercase
"sure"
I always found them pointless when I was teaching. To me, the issue was that a student who missed a class missed the information and discussion that happened in that class, so the reason for missing it was irrelevant. Hit by a bus, stoned, whatever, you still needed to figure out how to get that hole filled in so that it didn't damage your work in the class overall. Excusing an absence felt rather "high school" to me; I didn't care about butts in seats, but rather brains engaging with the material and other students.
She was courageous for being able to tell you about it. It's such a goddamn epidemic on campuses. I hope you could respond with compassion, compassion, compassion, plus anger and tons of support service recommendations.
In my first semester as a TA (although that's incidental–I'm not making it a contest), I was talking about media awareness and showing part of Jean Kilbourne's "Killing Us Softly" series on images of women in the media. The first-year women were paying close attention, the first-year guys quietly making approving noises at the sexed-up images and/or scoffing under their breath that this could be an "issue." At the end of the clip, one girl said, "This is why I'm bulimic." Stunned silence.
I didn't say anything for about a minute. I just wanted everyone to sit with that comment for a bit. Then I told her she was brave, and thanked her. Everyone got it–that class KILLED media awareness, and I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with me.
For all our bitching, it's amazing and heartbreaking what can happen in a classroom.
I didn't mean to sound flip about it in my comment. As soon as I got over my five-second initial reaction of "wait, WHAT" I was able to confirm that she was receiving mental health counseling and, with the help of my teaching mentor and the student's academic dean, work out a plan for her to continue in my class.
Her essay about the assault was one of the better student essays I've read in my life, which is heartbreaking to me.
I had a student two years ago who — quite unbidden, because I couldn't have had the guts to ask for it — sent me the death certificate of her father in Trinidad after she missed one mandatory discussion section, which included the cause of death as "murder, by icepick." I still have not recovered from that one. Also, she broke the curve on both the midterm and final for the class of upwards of 200 students, and ended up with 103%. I couldn't stop thinking about how proud her father probably would've been. Yowsers.
I was literally just thinking about geology professors too! I mean, I usually take cues from other people and see if they refer to the profs as Dr. or not just in case. Though I use the rule that if you've heard stories about them getting terribly drunk on field trips or nearly causing all their students to die during field camp, they're probably the type to be totally ok with being called by their first name.
At my field camp at a different university, I had one of my profs (who was very good about not killing us) ask me if I had met a Dr. [insert name here] at my home school. It took me a while to figure out she was referring to Andy, my sed/strat professor and that I had forgotten what his last name was until then.
#GeologyProblems
It'd be so nice to reply to this by stating all the things you'd rather be doing than reading that message.
I am not a professor, but I do teach high school and students ask me for letters of reference all the time in the spring and fall. I have roughly 150 students per semester. While I see them every day, if I know all their names, I am doing well. Knowing specific details about their lives, their skill sets, their achievements and work and school experience? Yeah. There is no WAY I can know all that about every student. THAT's why students need to provide that information to the person writing the recommendation letter.
The most terrifying late fee issue I've ever dealt with was at my college – you can check out handheld GPS units in order to do research and/or assignments for classes that involve digital mapping. I checked one out for a class assignment, and had an entertaining (though very rambly) conversation about the history of mapping techniques and technology with an elderly librarian as I turned it back in. Several days later I get an email saying I owe the library several hundred dollars for the unit because it hasn't been turned in. Apparently the librarian had such a good time waxing poetic to me about his days doing land surveying and old-school paper-based cartography that he didn't actually enter the freakin' GPS as returned. Luckily I was able to get it sorted out, but I'm not sure my blood has ever run so cold at the sight of a late fee before or since.
I've already had a – I'm going to miss the final because I need to go to Hawaii in December to spread my dad's ashes but if I wait until after the exams the flights are too expensive. What do you even say to that?
I followed your directions explicitly? Why did I get a 50%?
basic formatting, 1/2 margins (when the directions say 1" margins), bibliography formatted (when you already wrote a bibliography with the correct formatting for me), you left out half of the required content, and what you did include, looked like you wrote it 5 minutes before class.
and I am totally stealing the remark to an F. That is priceless!
See, several times my mom popped the news of horrific tragedies as she drove me to school on the first day of final exams, as I tried desperately to cram. Thanks, mom, for driving everything else out of my head! There's gotta be some kind of middle ground.
I once had a student email a picture of a poster presentation that was three weeks past due and also two days after the semester was over…
Revisiting this post because I just had to email 6 students to tell them they'd get an incomplete if they didn't turn in their final papers (due this past Monday) by tomorrow. Am now in awe of the contract-issuing professor. Might need to try that.
Please come take my class. I promise to send you emails that are just as thoughtfully crafted as yours!
The student who pissed me off the most with being picky responded to my offer of an noon Thursday appointment with, "Can we meet at noon on Friday? I don't have class on Thursday so I like to sleep in." (I refused because I don't teach on Fridays and I reserve it for my own research. And because I like to sleep in.)
(ETA: I ask my students to give me three times they're available and I pick one. If they're inconvenient or inappropriate times – no, I won't meet with you at 6:45 p.m. on a Friday – I offer to discuss via Skype instead.)
I didn't pull the wrong file trick, but I did clearly and unabashedly bullshit my way through a few of those little reaction papers. I compared the central argument of a book on 18th-century France to "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" because my attitude was that any prof who doesn't trust grad students will do the reading and assigns reaction papers deserves whatever free-associative dreck I feel like pulling together.
Because of course no one ever has to make sense outside of English class.
sieg hiel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism
A student's essay a couple years ago bore a striking resemblance to a Wikipedia entry, so I called him in to talk about it. He unashamedly said that it wasn't his fault, because his *mother* wrote his paper, and she didn't know she couldn't use Wikipedia. I now know why the word gobsmacked was invented. Fast forward: he's been 'excused' from the university (something about some other similar issues), and he writes me to ask if I can change his F to a C, because he needs a C average to apply for readmission.
Okay, do I win?
My favorites are the students who don't understand grades are just straightforward evaluations of the work you submitted, and not gold stars or cookies you can beg, whine or bully your way into getting. So I get these panicked "I know you're giving me a D but I really need at least a B+ to graduate so can you please change it!! P.S. I don't mean this as a threat but my dad is a dean here!!!" emails at the end of every semester. Hey kid, you didn't hand in any assignments at all for a month? And then you skipped the final exam? I'm not giving you a D to punish you, YOU'RE getting a D because that's the exact percentage of points YOU earned. And P.S. Your dad thinks you're a lazy little shit too.
Yup. And I really don't even care at this point, I just enjoy the creativity of some of their more outlandish excuses. And no, I won't come to the rescue at the end of the semester when it suddenly dawns on them that all their clever BS got them was a crappy grade.
Just got one. Unbelievable
"I got an 81 in the class and I did the extra credit that means I got an 91% but I want an A+ and I worked for it what can I do to get that."
I once had a student email me he wouldn't be able to get his online line paper submitted in time because someone had just cut his Internet connection.
Y’all, these are brilliant. I’m also convinced you’ve been snooping in my inbox… scary accuracy! 🙂
Great article that I even see before relat to this tp
*silently laughing until weeping over a stack of rough drafts*
I should have known that someone of Mallory's gift's would have been able to compromise my workplace pc and study all of my student e-mails… Funniest Gifs.
I was watching videos for x time then and I saw your article. may be it will be better website with a socialvideos