I have long been baffled and often simply outraged at what students think is an acceptable email to send to an instructor. I’ve ridiculed their improbable communiqu?s before, but this, coupled with a few real stinkers in my inbox today, had me burbling with ire all over again. It’s almost as if they don’t care if their professors think they are even literate, let alone intelligent or decent writers. It’s as if they are completely unashamed that they don’t know the difference between a question and a statement, or how to spell "Wednesday." Witness:
um hey i was wondereng if u could let me know what we need to read for wenesday. thx.
Hello this is Bill from you class and i was not in your class today. what do i need to do.
I was hoping you could tell me something to write for the paper since I dont really have a opinion on the authors. Thanks in advance.
Not only is there an overwhelming disregard for proper spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation, but they also almost universally refuse to capitalize the word "I," proper nouns, or the first word of a sentence. I find this infuriating–I mean, don’t get me wrong; I had my E.E. Cummings bad poetry stage myself, and didn’t we all? I did not, however, ever write an email to a professor in the style of Mr. Cummings, nor in the style of Mr. Cummings’s hypothetical punk-ass teenaged grandson with an unlimited text-messaging plan. I mean, "thx"? Seriously? You are for real with that?
The worst part of it all, though, is that, for the most part, they’re writing me to ask unforgivably stupid questions. Questions I have already answered for them on paper, in no uncertain terms. I carefully construct a syllabus each term that lists a detailed schedule of what will happen in class each day and what needs to be read when, as well as all the course policies (attendance, late papers, weight of each grade, etc.). Do they ever consult this syllabus? No, of course they fucking well do not. That would be too much work, I expect. They just fire off a barely intelligible email and wait for the answer to come drifting into their inbox. Lazy oafs. I won’t even get started on the one who wants me to tell him what to write because he "dont really have a opinion." How nice it must be to float like that in a gentle haze of ignorance, unburdened by opinions of any kind. Or apostrophes.
Students! Don’t embarrass yourself by emailing your teachers as if you were texting your friends. As much as you may wish it were true, your teachers are, like, totally not your BFF. We don’t want to hear about your boyfriend who dumped you; we don’t care about your dead grandmother; you can’t borrow our shoes; and for the love of dog, we don’t ever, ever want to see the word (ha! "word") "thx" in an email from you.
Thank you. Is that so hard?
If I went all out with the title of this post, it’d look like this:
i(a
ne
ma
il
ar
ri
ve
s)
n
furi
ation
(See here)
k ill get on it thx.
p.s. tahts the kina stuff makes me wana kick cumigns the nuts somtimes.
Better be nice to them. One of them is likely to grow up to be President :(
They’re everywhere… This one (for a science paper) is more or less grammatical, but but but:
“I need to change my paper topic because I cannot find enough information for my topic. I am very worried and I was wondering if you could suggest a topic for me in which you know there will be plenty of information on the subject and there will be tables that I can use in my paper.”
Arrrggghhhh. One of the fifty topics on the handout for the unimaginative? There must be papers containing tables on some of those.
The range of salutations is funny too - everything from “Dear Professor” to “Hey” (or maybe it was “hey”). Guess we’ve got to answer to them all.
Oh. My. Fucking. god.
Yes. I too have been the unlucky recipient of these kinds of emails.
And to think I keep hearing that Zembla U. is now more competitive to get into then when I went there. Then again, UMASS is supposed to also have a good rep. Do instructors and profs in the Ivy Leagues seriously have to deal with the same crap? Where DO the semi-intelligent go?
Reed? Is it still ok?
Maybe these kids are paying “professionals” over the internet to do their applications and personal essays for them. I just really have no other explanation.
I can tell you one thing. That student is BOUND for a career in marketing or something equally ubiquitous. That’s where most of them end up. Not speaking from experience or anything of course.
well said…we only wish you’d written this for us…you da man, zembla…how can we be da man, if you da man?
xoxo
RYS
I think we should do a job swap. Seriously, it would be interesting to see compare notes on how this disease has spread across the Atlantic.
I have a very strict, yet simple, solution to this problem with my own students. It is called the Delete button. If I get complaints about not answering assinine emails, I merely comment that they are assinine and remind them that the information is on the syllabus. I have no sympathy for the lack of responsibility of these students, especially in my neck of the woods, where most of them think Daddy’s checkbook covers their grades as easily as their tuition.
I greatly respect your efforts, Vague, but I fear they are futile. These people will get out of school and go on to torture those of us who have to work with them no matter what you do. Their parents allowed their little brains to atrophy at an early age, and there’s surely no reclamation now. I salute you, though, with a list of things people have emailed to me at work:
Tim, why is the 2 reports are different?
We’ve gots many criteria’s for these project.
Then there’s the best phrase from the news of late: “Yes, no, I this is…”
i think you should just wear this shirt to class everday and then point to it when they aske the stupida questions:
http://www.onehorseshy.com/highbrow/stupid_idiot_french?p=onehorseshy.11569344
what i want to know is, what do you tell them? especially when they want to know why their grades aren’t higher? the closest i got to being in your position was when we’d have to do peer critiques in english classes. that made for some uncomfortable group work. remind me that they’re not all dullards? please?
(also, i feel the need to explain that i don’t capitalize because i only type with one hand, so i don’t have that kind of time to waste. unless it’s a formal email, in which case i have been known to hold down the shift key every once and again.)