I have a great idea for a blog that would no doubt be much more popular than this blog. The content of the blog would just be professors and teachers posting e-mails they get from students. Because frankly the e-mails that I have gotten from students are so lacking in etiquette that they are almost funny. There is almost never a salutation, no "Dear Professor X" or no "Dear Sir" or anything like that. No greeting. Then there is usually no signature, or no ending to the e-mail. The words just stop. And often there is no actual request. Just a statement or comment that its left to you as the course instructor to figure out the question. For example:
I can't find where the HW folder is located. I looked under assignments and it's empty.
Thanks,
[name redacted]
Awesome! But what of it? Do you want to know where the homework is? Or are you just letting me know that there is no homework in the assignment folder?
I also enjoyed this one:
the power point is saved as .pptx it need to be re saved as .ppt or it wont convert for mac computers.... please resave as.ppt
Note that there is no salutation and no proper ending to the e-mail. Who sent this? And I love the statement "it need to be re saved" so instead of the student installing the patch that converts .pptx to .ppt, the instructor needs to re-save all of the powerpoint files. What a sense of entitlement! How about you show up to class and take notes!
I think this is the first sign of me getting old and crotchety, but I really can't stand e-mails that lack any semblance of etiquette.
Posts
