In Which I Decry the Electronic Age and the Death of the Fountain Pen

During a (relatively) recent conversation with Sarah Jewell about students and communication, I mentioned that a friend had sent me a blog entry intended to provide pointers for effective communication with professors. Sarah said I should post it here, which I thought was a great suggestion. I then of course immediately forgot her excellent suggestion, going blithely about my day/weeks/ahem, month or so . . . until, that is, Kelly mentioned that a few Frog Blog entries might make up an hour of service time. Seeing as how I just happen to have an hour of my time freed up every week due to the season ender of “Mad Men,” I found myself hit with the dire need to blog. For approximately 10 entries.

I don’t specifically discuss Dr. Leddy’s tips during class time, although his entry does offer up quite a bit of excellent opportunity for class discussion (audience, for example, and why it matters to think about this). I have found, though, that when I bring focus to this topic, subsequent emails I receive from students are much easier to read. Having worked as an adjunct simultaneously at two different schools, teaching the same topic, it was darned difficult to know whether I was emailing with a UNT student or a TWU student, especially as so few of them used their school email account. I begged, pleaded, and cajoled my students to include their class number in the email re line (especially so that I could get those darned filters to work that I spent so much time setting up!) but had no luck. No regular luck, really, but some occasional, seriously sporadic luck. Once I brought focus to this particular blog entry, though, the students began to take some heed to what I was asking them to do.

I think what appealed to them the most was that they were getting some sort of secret information. "Here's some tips - from a professor! - about how to successfully email with professors!" I wasn't saying "Do this because I say so," but instead just put the information out there for them to make use of if they chose to do so. Obviously they didn't all do so (see? I still have bald spots where I pulled my hair out), but I got the definite impression that the students who DID do so felt like they had a leg up.

I think my next undertaking might involve another one of his entries...I'll let you know if I enjoy an outbreak of Emily Post Syndrome in either of my classes.