How 2 Rite a Prof Email? | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools

may have missed with your hosts, AJ Coutee and Jason Gordon. Hey everybody, welcome back

Welcome to the show. If you've never been here before, we are the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses

the things that schools may not have prepared you for. I'm AJ sitting across from me holding

it down. Jason, Jason, how you doing? Doing great, AJ. Today is a, I get half the day off

So for the second half of the day, I'm going to a golf tournament. Oh, that sounds awesome

I love golf. Oh yeah. And the weather's nice now too. So, you know, I'm not that big of

a golf fan to tell you the truth. I don't really play and I almost never watch it, but

this tournament comes to town every year and the weather's amazing right now. So I'm going

go out there and enjoy it. I wish I could be doing that because after this, I'm still doing stuff for the doctoral program that I'm in now. So congratulations. Oh, buddy, it is kicking my

tail right now. Hang in there. It'll be worth it. Now, which leads me to another question. Let's

just assume that we have this person that asks a question. They sent us in a question. Let's just

call him TJ. And this person is in a doctoral program, let's say, maybe in for business

and they are trying to complete the program according to what's been sent in

But they already have a job, so they don't have to worry about using the program

to propel their job, to find another job. They're just using it to keep the same job

because they really like what they do. How important would you say GPA is

in this doctoral program for CJ or MJ or whatever his name was

I would say D is for degree. Hey, I like it. I don't think it's very important grade wise at all

I would say whatever you turn out in terms of your publication material

Right. And whatever you're doing, whatever you're working towards and presenting at conferences and stuff, that's what's going to be important

There you go. So there's the answer. I'll let this person know. Well, in today's episode, we are talking about student email etiquette and the tips and tricks

So this goes into our tips and tricks series. So we're going to be giving you a few tips and tricks here to help you become better at creating emails

And I know this may be something that you think, well, this is really irrelevant

This is such a small, maybe a small issue. But it is actually a fairly big issue among college students, at least from our perspective, at least from the professor's perspective

It's huge. I mean, and I talk to employers all the time

So it's a real issue. Before we jump into it, though, let me remind everybody on the call to action

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That would help us out tremendously as well. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, let's get into the quick question

And the quick question today is, what is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to students emailing you

Well, I'm going to have to go general on this one. Just the lack of etiquette

You know, today we're going to talk about etiquette. We're going to talk about how to use it effectively and, you know, tips and tricks for just being effective with your email and making it an important, more important, more useful part of your life

But the lack of etiquette I see from students in emailing and I've been party to emails between the student and their employer because I coordinate internships and some of that lack of etiquette is still there and it just creates a horrible impression

So that being said, definitely for me, can't stand to see it. You know, all the things we're going to talk about in the etiquette section

I think my answer would be the use of text jargon in the email to me

They use those shorthand that they would use from text messages because I guess that's what we're used to right now anyway

They use that in the email itself, which, again, I understand. And probably because a lot of the students are emailing me from their phone and it's just quicker

I get that. But I'm a middle aged dad. I'm not lit. I don't know the lingo

And so some of these times I get stuff and I'm like, what does that mean

Like, I got to go to Urban Dictionary just to figure out what it means. Oh, I got an email the other day where a student said, Professor Gordon got your email, Addy, from so and so

And I'm like, really? This is the way you start off. professional conversation about me helping you find an internship

You got my Addy from somebody. That's a new one. I haven't heard that one yet

Oh, really? Oh, that's the one for today, man. You got to shorten everything down to just a quarter of the word

and put Y on the end of it. I feel like I got to do research every semester

to figure out what new terms are coming up so I can become a little bit more literate to the new lingo

Yeah, we're not cool anymore. Oh, we're definitely not cool. Whoever's in high school getting ready to go to college listening to this

are like, man, these guys are outdated. My son is very, he's not shy to tell me I'm not hip

And in our day, when somebody said they were lit, it means a whole lot different today than it was back then

So when he said he was lit, I was like, on what? Yeah, that meant something different in our time

So, well, let's get into this main topic. Let's get into this student email etiquette

And I'm just going to start with this basic question, which is probably on the minds of some of the listeners right now

And that is, why do we think bringing up etiquette from a student email perspective is important enough to be used for an entire show

I mean, it's something so small that we don't use all the time. It's really almost, you know, we use it. Professors use it to communicate when something needs to be communicated to the students. And the students usually communicate to the professor if they've been asked a question or if something's wrong or if they need something

it's I mean it's just the impact of it it creates an impression of you right sometimes it's your

first impression sometimes it establishes a continued impression but you know when you don't

have personal interaction with somebody and they can't get to know you more deeply the only thing

they have the judge is the communications you send to them and when you send an email that presents

you in one way if that's accurate well fine okay good it may be a detriment to you but okay fine

good, but sometimes it presents you in a life far more negatively than you expect

So because of that, I think we have to address the whole etiquette aspect of it

Now, we'll throw in some tips and tricks there to make it just a more effective part of your

life, but that's why etiquette's important. Yeah. There is a difference between receiving an email from a student who is like I said just using shorthand They almost look at it as a text versus receiving what would be considered a professional email

And when I say professional email, I don't want you to write a book. Like you don't have to write a novel when it comes to writing the email

It needs to be clear and concise. but there are certain information that needs to be included and there are certain ways to

to communicate things uh that need to be communicated and without those it takes away

like you said that almost that first impression like you you start building this this bias

from many factors in in class i mean the way that you present yourself in class you're going to have

an impression on the professor the way you conduct yourself in class just like you're going to have

an impression on the professors in the way that you conduct yourself in communicating outside of

class. So we think this is a really big, big area that needs to be focused in on

Okay. Well, let's, let's jump in there. Let's give them, let's give them some stuff

You want to start with etiquette? You want to start with tips or what? Well, before we do that, let's, let's, I, there's one point that I want to make

when it comes to us going through the tips and tricks. And that is, we are specifically focusing

in on student email, not necessarily business email, but student email, the communication between

you and the professor or you and the admin. Now, when I say that, I also want you to know there's

going to be some obvious overlapping between student email and business email. There's probably

going to be a whole lot of overlapping, but a lot of the stuff that we're talking about is really in the context of the classroom in some sort. So obviously there are certain things we're

going to say that might not be necessary for a business email. So keep that in mind as we go

through these. Good point. I mean, this is training for the future or the present even

But yeah, keep that in mind. Which leads me to my first tip, because this is, again, specific to a

student email. You wouldn't use this specific tip for a business because it doesn't relate to

business. But I would say my first tip is always include what class you're referring to in the

email. That's a big one for me because we teach multiple classes. And when a student says, hey

I have a question or I'm not going to be able to come to this class or I missed this test

Can I set up a makeup time? And all they give us is their name, but we don't know what class

they're in, especially at the beginning of the semester. We're still trying to learn your names. And we have a lot of students in each class. So rather than me having to get out a role to figure

out where your name is in what class so I know what class you're referring to, if you go ahead

and say, hey, I'm so-and-so in your 8 to 915 for me managerial accounting class

If you go ahead and get that out for me, it takes the work out of me having to look to

see what class you're in. And that helps me a lot. Yeah, that's a pet peeve for me too as well

I mean, I've got three or four classes depending. And for students just to email me with their name, and sometimes they don't even include

their full name. And then in their email address, I don't see their full name

Or I see sometimes they go by their middle name. And, you know, we have a lot of Hispanic students who have four names

So the last name that shows up does not always indicate the student to me

So, yeah, I'm going to piggyback off of that one. Not only should you identify yourself, you should identify yourself in the title. Yes

And I recommend talking titles. Okay. So Jason Gordon, Ed 101 dash need help with Bloom, right

That type of thing. Give as much information in a talking title

You don't need a whole long sentence, right? That doesn't show up

But something abbreviated, kind of the way you bullet things on your resume where you

abbreviate things. I mean, that is extremely useful. I know exactly the purpose of it

just when I go to check my email and, you know, we get dozens of emails a day, right? And we have

to sort through them and triage the ones we address first. If I see something that's a talking title

and I know what I need to do for it, it makes it a low hanging fruit for addressing that immediately

So I'll go to that quickly. So if you want to get your question answered or the information you're

requesting or whatever, do that. Use a talking title, identify yourself, make it easier for us

to take action immediately so we don't have to do a whole lot of background work before we can

respond. Yeah, that's a big one. I usually tell my students, you know, give me something in the

subject because a lot of times we as professors also get notifications on a phone that we have

email and then that gives us more or less that gives us the title, the subject line and who it's

from. And like you just said, we get so many emails over the course of a day. I mean, the other day

we were, I was in class for three hours and we had already had nine emails and majority of them are

spam emails coming from either publishers or coming from something that somebody's trying to

sell us on a product they're trying to sell us on whatever. And I just want to know which ones is

the most relevant for me at that time. So being able to see that, hey, this is from a student and

this is a problem that they're having from a notification allows me to not just ignore it

and hope that the notification goes away until I have some free time. I can actually get to it

right away. So I think that's a very good point. That subject line is very important. Yeah

All right. You want me to throw one out there? Yeah, go ahead. So students all the time have to attach things to the email and they will say, I've attached a document for you or I've attached this

Oftentimes we're checking in on our phone. It doesn't work as well. Sometimes the document doesn't pull up clearly type scenario

And just for speed and convenience and ease of, well, providing you the information that you're or the response that you're looking for

If you're going to include an attachment, give a brief description of what it is or what it says

So you can go from there. Right. That was a big one I learned in the army

They basically said if you ever sent an email with an attachment to a superior, never assume that the attachment will be opened

That's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, that was a rule, especially the higher you went

It was understood. You send something to a colonel or a general officer, they will not open that attachment

Wow. It is not going to happen. So you need to have a talking title

you need to briefly, almost bullet pointed, explain what was the content of that attachment

if it was important and you need a response for them. Right. You know, we use the bottom line up front approach

You always at the beginning of that email, put that bottom line up front. Right

And then after that. Right. You know, and when I say bottom line, the bottom line of the email, what are you asking for

What do you need? And then you provide the information afterwards. Very cool

I've never heard that. That's really interesting. Oh, yeah. That is standard operating procedure

They give you templates of emails with nothing but name, title, date

Here's how it should look. Signature block. But bottom line up front, that is the bluff, right, that you put right there before you start typing anything else other than the salutation

Wow. That's a good – that is a really good tip because I never saw that one. Yeah

All right Back at you All right So I titled this one for the love of all things holy because this one is this is probably the absolute biggest pet peeve And this is not simply from

students. And actually, this probably doesn't occur. If I look at it, this doesn't occur as

much from students as it just occurs from other professors, too. But students can have this as

well. If you receive an email, a class email. So a bunch of you are on this class email from the

professor and they were asking for your input specifically or your answer to this question

specifically, please hit reply and not reply all. When you reply, make sure you reply to the person

that is sending the initial email, not to everyone else in the class, because if you do that

everyone else in the class, if they do that as well, you, the replier, are going to still have

23, 24 other emails that mean nothing to you because you don't care about the answer because

you were just answering the professor's question. So it saves a ton of stress and anxiety when you

get 24 notifications from something that you don't even need to know. And it just makes life a little

bit easier for you as a student, as well as the other students in your class. So make sure you

reply rather than reply all. And be careful with that reply all button. If you're going to say

things that you don't want somebody else to hear. Yes. And make sure. So and this brings up another point to whatever you're using for your your your email platform

Some of them have a default if there's more than one more than one receiver that reply

all is the default. And you actually have to manually go in there and change it to reply

And some of them the reply is the default. So you just need to know what platform default is set for

Yeah. Yeah, good point there. More people have gotten fired. Yeah. Misusing that reply all button than you would imagine. Right. Because they say something negative and it gets back to the wrong purpose

Well, I would say so I will say this just to add on to yours. Just don't say anything negative to email. That's a paper trail that you don't want

Exactly. I tell my students, I used to teach a communications course, tell my students, follow that. You know, and this is ironic that the person who coined it or said it was Elliot Spitzer. And if you follow what happened with him, you know, he got in trouble for being documented as using the services, an escort service regularly. Right

But when he was U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, he said, never write anything in an email that you would care if it were published on the front page of the newspaper

Yep, that's true. Right. So basically make it innocuous, put things only out there that you wouldn't care if the world knew about it

Yep. All right. So I'm going to jump to a different one. Well, back to what we started with, the idea of not using lingo and using complete sentences, using proper grammar, things like that

A tip for you is to activate something like Grammarly or some other grammar sentence structure check software on your emails so that you're writing proper emails

You're writing complete sentences. You have subject-verb agreement, things like that. Because once again, that's I mean, that's an impression that you're creating about yourself

If we as professors see that you can't write an effective email, I mean, it changes our perception of you and and, you know, what work you're capable of

Right. We try not to and we try to give the benefit of the doubt

But when it looks when we read something that that comes across as that unprofessional, we realize that the student has a long way to go before they're professionally ready for the workforce

Right. So anyway, that's that's a big one for me. Which was my third one was talking about spelling and grammar because it does create this negative kind of bias in our heads that is just unnecessary

You know, you don't want to go ahead and put that out there for a professor to kind of have that impact on a professor's perception of you

It's just unnecessary. So go ahead and make sure that your spelling and grammar are correct, which leads me really to my next one

and I'm interested to almost, this is, I don't know if this is just a personal one and you feel

differently about it. I would love to get your opinion on this one. But I have always been taught

when you communicate, when you're writing, whether you're typing it out or whatever

and you're writing a letter or an email or whatever, it is important that you

write as if you were speaking. And by that I mean, don't be afraid to use contractions

So instead of saying I am, you can put I apostrophe M because it's easier to read

The flow of reading doesn't get caught up because that isn't how we naturally talk

And if you're reading how you naturally talk, then it becomes easier to read over time

Like you don't get caught up in things. You don't get caught up in how things sound and have to reread things and such. So I'm a big believer of having using those contractions because that's how we speak. And it makes the flow of reading easier

I would echo that. And that's the difference between a formal letter. Right. And and and an email. Right. That is the level of formality pretty much that changes. You still need appropriate grammar. You still need the appropriate salutation. Right. Mr. or miss that type of thing. But maybe even that changes a little bit based upon your familiarity. Right. I do always recommend following up with a salutation. Right. That is professor comma and then start

Right. That type of thing. Don't just go in with a flat response generally

So even when it's a reply to email, I still encourage that

But, yeah, I agree. You can still use those salutations. You know, you'll still proofread it and everything like that to make sure it's grammatically correct

It'll just take on a slightly less formal tone because of that

So if you need something, like if it's a very professional communication, like you have something extremely important, like a request for a letter of recommendation from your professor or something of that nature, in that case, you go with a more formal tone and not use them

The one thing I'll say be careful with about that aspect of how we talk, be careful with your pronouns, meaning that just using I, me, he, she type scenario rather than using the person's name

If you have multiple parties that you're describing in the scenario, that can cause the reader to get lost

Yes. Meaning are we talking about this he or that he? Yep. Right

Which person, which guy are we talking about here? that type of thing. And I see that all the time. Students are trying to explain a scenario to me

and they just keep saying he or she the whole time. But there are multiple parties that they're

talking about and I have no idea who they're addressing. And it makes sense in the student's

head but it doesn make sense to me Right And I have to clarify And that what you want to avoid You want to make sure your emails are readily understood and look professional And if you aren careful

that overly familiar tone will get you in trouble. So I want to ask you a question

about your salutation. I want to get your opinion on this. Maybe it'll help the listeners out

So let's say I'm a student and you're the professor and I email you and I say, Professor Gordon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you reply back to me to say

You know, dear so and so, here's my answer. And I reply back to you and we kind of have this back and forth going. Is there ever a point in time in a link of of emails to where the salutation is unnecessary

So like, is it the re-reply that you don't necessarily have to put Professor Gordon every single time that you reply

Yeah, I would say if you know it's going to be a rapid succession of emails that, you know, immediately we're going to go back and forth and use it almost as a text message because the response is going to be sharp and, you know, to the point, that type of thing

That's when you would drop the salutation. Right. But if you're going to be addressing multiple points and it's going to be sitting that scenario where you sit down and think about the email and you address the points, craft the letter, send it and expect an equally thoughtful response

In that scenario, once again, I say keep the salutation. Yeah, I've always wondered about that in terms of how it feels when you drop the citation

Is there a point where you can just say, okay, we've gone through this enough. We don't have to keep saying professor or mister or doctor or whatever

Well, once again, it's going to come down again to the purpose of the email

All right, well, give us another one. Okay, so I'm going to jump out of the pure etiquette aspect again and just say this is a cautionary tale

Watch your tone in an email. So we don't realize how easy it is to misinterpret words versus how you interpret something when somebody says it to you

OK, so if you use things like voice translate and stuff like that or voice transcription to write your emails and stuff, if you read that email separately afterwards, you'll see sometimes there'll be a question as to is this person being snide or are they are they making fun of the situation

Is it a joke or, you know, what is their their attitude

So it is so easy to misinterpret that. So be careful about that

Read your email multiple times and try to picture how the other person will receive the information

So if you're going to make a joke or you're going to make something that could come across as demanding or, you know, crass

Deal with that. Right. You know, change the email. So I guess my my tip there is watch your tone in the email because it can so easily be misinterpreted

Have you ever heard of RBF or maybe RAF to some people

Resting angry face? Oh, yeah. I'm not going to say what the B was, but resting angry

I almost see some people when they write emails, they have resting angry emails

Like they just – I know they don't mean to, but it just comes off very almost curt

And B, yeah, you definitely want to be aware of that as you go through because it can come off in different ways

And that's the problem with with written communication is there's no feeling behind it

We have to interpret how you feel and we could interpret it incorrectly

So that's a great point. Yeah. I mean, if you've ever taken a communications course in high school or you've taken one in college already or something like that, you know that communications, right, have to be interpreted by the recipient

Right. You're it's kind of like you're downloading it and yzing it in your brain

If you don't have those secondary cues like somebody's facial expressions, somebody's tone of voice, the volume of their voice, things like that

One of the biggest issues I see there is people misusing capital letters, underlining things, all, you know, all cap words

All cap word is like yelling at somebody. Right. Using an explanation point

People put one, two and three exclamation points. Well, that's like yelling at someone

Right. And it's interpreted that way. But you may not mean it that way because I see it all the time in text messages where it's just, you know, to show excitement or something like that. Right. So just be careful about those things. Right. Interpretation is subject to the beholder

Well, I got one more. And I would say check your email regularly. That is a huge one. And especially if you have already emailed somebody requesting something. You know, I've had students email me and say, hey, I missed this exam or I missed this assignment. Am I able to do a makeup exam

and I get it fairly quickly. And so I immediately email them back to say

okay, here's the times you can make up because some of this stuff is time sensitive. And I'll email them back five minutes

after they emailed me. And we're talking midday. And then I won't get a response

back until midday of the next day, which is past the time that I may have suggested

in the original email, my reply. And so- That happens to me all the time

It is frustrating to me that if – especially if you're requesting something, keep a checkup to make sure that this person hasn't emailed you back because you're requesting something and they could be giving you the option to do something, but it's time sensitive

I recommend checking your email at least twice a day at the beginning of the school day and at the end of the school day, but preferably at least three times a day, once in the middle as well, just for that single occurrence

Yeah, and I would caveat that – Right, it's not even in something in short order. I would caveat that as unless you're requesting something, like unless you specifically requested something. And in that case, I would check it more than that

Yeah, keep checking back specifically for that email. And here's one trick on that. Make certain that if you have multiple email addresses, forward those multiple emails, those inbox receipts, forward them to a singular email address that you check all the time

Now, Gmail, for example, makes it easy. So if you forward other email addresses, you can actually reply from that email account and it will send it from the email address that was the original recipient

So say, for example, I have a Microsoft email address, a school email address

I have a I don't know. An AOL email address at AOL, Yahoo, whatever

I don't even know what exists out there anymore. Hotmail. But I have all of those and I have them combined into my Gmail

If I reply to an email that was forwarded from my AOL account, it will reply from my AOL account

So it keeps the email addresses consistent. Just that functionality makes it so easy to use a single email inbox

I was not aware of that. Yeah. That's really interesting. I'm going to have to look into that

So make your life a lot easier. I think a lot of people forward or combine their emails within, say, an email service provider like Apple, right

Yeah. Mailbox that you set up and you add other email accounts to it

Right. And then you can combine those. So that's another useful way, particularly if you're checking your your email from your phone regularly

Wow. That's a really good. I did not know that. I need to look into that. Yeah. So do you have another one for us, AJ

You want me to throw another one out? You throw another one out. OK, here's one that this is a professional practice that you will take on when you enter the workforce

But starting to do it in school will help make your life way simpler

Use your folders right over on to the left of whatever email service you use, whether it's Gmail, whether it's Microsoft, whatever

They give you places to store older emails, move emails into folders that are appropriately labeled

Right. And then star or flag important emails so that they come to the top

Right. That type of thing. So you get reminders. Gmail's got this great thing that you can set reminders for yourself to make certain that by this time you've at least responded to this

So it'll take old emails and move them back up to the top. I will admit I am the absolute world's worst at that. I I'm terrible at it

I have, I remember at one point, I think it was a couple of years ago

And since then I've, I've deleted a lot of emails, but I think I had over 12,000 emails

in my, my inbox because, and I think it has a lot to do with my lack of discipline and

organization and not just, I don't feel comfortable enough that I'm actually going to do a good

job in it. So I just don't do it at all. And I just have them stuck there

And if I need something, then I just go to the search function and type it in and hope for the best

and I'm even looking at my emails right now and I've got over 5,000 emails in my inbox right now

and they all date from, oh, let's see, the last January of 2019

and they're all just sitting there. So I'm the world's worst at that

and I wish somebody could just say, okay, this is how you do it

I know it's something very trivial but at the same time, when you have somebody who struggles with organization

uh, and has always struggled with organization. It's just one of those things that takes time to learn

And I have not put that time as a priority and I need to. Yeah

See there folks, you know, we ourselves need to practice what we preach

I'm a little bit better. I, uh, I, I keep mine fairly organized

I've, I routinely get down to zero emails. And so my work email right now, I think I have five emails sitting in it from today

And my personal email, a lot of them are safe things. Right

and I just keep them there for, you know, reflective view. But of recent emails, I've got about 10

As somebody who has always prided myself on that strategy, it's kind of that brand that I've been on this podcast

That is the one area I think I have not used strategy very well in

because there are certain things within an email provider that you can use to automate things

You can use filters and you can use, you know, different sorting functions and different you know create different functions to do different things So if then that kind of thing uh and that is the one area I don think I ever used that for I just haven taken the time because I guess I always I associated with not

necessarily needing to take the time because it's just easy just to delete what I don't need and read what I do need. But that may be somewhere in the, in the very near future that I'm going to

take some time, just spend some time to create all this stuff, to automate it, to make it easier

Yeah, those automatic templates are great. I have to reply with the same email to a lot of people, particularly for internships and things like that

So using a couple of templates is a huge time saver. Adds efficiency, gets the conversation going, that type of thing

And then certainly if you have these ongoing conversations with individual students, right, creating those folders, slide them in there so you can track the prior conversation easily

Well, that is all the tips and tricks for the list that we have

But I do have some rapid questions maybe that you can answer real quick just to kind of see where you're at

I want to see kind of what your opinion are on these kind of things. So one is what about the auto reply

Like if you're not there and you just – do you feel it's important that if maybe on vacation, is it important to set the auto reply to say, hey, I'm not available to answer right now

But as soon as I get back on this date, I will be sure to reply back to your email

Yes. And for one reason, that is a pro level move. Okay

You look like you have your stuff together. You look like a true professional when you do something like that

All right. So I wrote that down in my notes to do. Particularly as a student. So yes, I've got to do that

I've wrote that down in my notes to do list. So I need to start doing that

What about like if you're trying to set up a time to meet with somebody or some kind of appointment or something like that

Do you think it is good to just say, hey, what are some times that you need or what do you think about this time

Or do you think it's good to just send them a calendar invite? Because a lot of these things allow you to integrate calendar invites into the email

So COVID, particularly in school, right, and we're right still in the middle of this pandemic, has made this more essential than ever

Right. The ability to, one, schedule meetings virtually, right, using video teleconference within your email

is so important. So integrating your calendar with your email, using them both so that if

somebody is going to send you an email and you want to say, all right, let's schedule a date, you can just share your calendar with them, right? Or they can send you an easy calendar invite that

you accept and it goes to your calendar and there you go. So checking your calendar on your phone

integrating your calendar with your email so that, you know, that is a usable tool for you

Right. It will make your interactions with their parties. And like I say, I use it all the time now. Right. If a student wants to talk to me, I immediately send them a calendar invite with a video teleconference link because many of the students are taking classes virtually these days

they're certainly on campus far less than they were prior to COVID so it makes it harder to

arrange meetings well that function has made it easier than ever but it makes it hard again it

makes it laborious right if I have to take the time to you know explain to you how this works or you know you don have a calendar that I can simply send you a video teleconference invite All right What about the really quickly the importance of a signature

Signature. You know, that's one of those that just looks professional. Again, I wouldn't say that one's essential

I do recommend that you put your accolades and things like that, your full name and your phone number, contact information, that type of thing below

Right. Again, it's just pro-level move. You look like you have your stuff together

Well, and when I said signature, I didn't mean like physically written signature. I'm talking about exactly what you say, but it's, you know, it says signature one for a lot of these things where you create it and it just automatically populates your name, your credentials, your address

And that way you don't have to type it every single time. It just is automatically there

That's huge. Particularly putting things like your phone number in there so you can be easily contacted, right

Your full name. And if you've got a difficult pronunciation of your name, put the phonetic pronunciation

You see a lot of people put the he, she, her, you know, the pronouns type thing

If that's important to you, particularly, you know, identify the correct pronouns for addressing

You know, if you have a professional salutation, professor, doctor, whatever, right, that you want to include in there, that's good as well

All right. One last one. the importance of using the correct email when it comes to correspondence. And by that, I mean

you know, as a professor getting an email from a student, is it better to get the email from the

student's school email or just a Gmail email or an AOL email or, you know, those kinds of things

Well, federal law says, you know, we cannot reply to students with student, any form of

personally identifying information, which is hard to keep out if you're addressing something about

class, that you have to do it from your school account. So always, always, always use your school

account. Don't send personal email messages. One, you're just going to get a reply back from the

professor that, hey, I can't correspond with you on this email. Send me one from your normal email

We can't search for your name and contact information as easily. It makes it difficult

for us to keep up with the conversation if you do it between multiple email addresses

So that's, once again, forwarding things to a single inbox can help with that, right

And then making certain you're creating the email from the appropriate email account is huge

And I'll tell you this, that translates into the business world as well

Yeah, I was going to say that too. You don't want to come across as unprofessional. Yeah, I would say maybe this is a close second tip

You know, this is one of the honorable mentions. But make sure you have a professional email, like the beginning

So, like, you know, your name, you know, first name dot last name or first initial last name or something that has your name and not like, you know, sexy drexy blah, blah, blah at, you know, this or goo goo gachu at yahoo.com or something like that

You don't want that for a professional email to communicate from. So make sure you have at least a specific professional email If you want to have a fun one for friends or what you had because I still have a stupid one when I was back in high school I mean it is awful but I still

have it and I use it as my junk mail. Like anytime somebody says, what's your email to sign up for

this? That's usually the ones I give because I never check it. And so make sure you have that

one as a, as a professional. You don't want something that's, that's going to be seen as

unprofessional. Yeah, definitely. I've seen that many times, particularly in the army when I had

And, you know, I was a military attorney and for a while there I was in legal assistance

So I had, you know, individual soldiers and family members who I was doing legal services for and I'd have to correspond with them

And some of the emails you would not believe it was so unprofessional

It was ridiculous. And, you know, I gave the same advice to all of them. So I give the same advice to students. Right

And I get it that you're probably not going to be sending professional email and correspondence from your private email in the school context

But this translates to the business environment. Right. And I will tell you this. When you're sending out emails outside of the internal school system, not just to professors, but to outside

Say, for example, you're applying to internships and things like that. It helps for the email to come from a dot edu from your school's email address

Third parties are way more willing to respond to a student who's asking for information or assistance or things like that than they are from just Joe Schmoe on the street with a regular personal email that, you know, is asking for information or assistance or help

There's just something about this social contract if people are willing to pay it, not pay it forward, right? Pay it backwards, I guess, in that scenario because they're responding to the student who needs help because hopefully somebody did that for them along and along when they were coming along

So I will say pro parent move when you have kids, if you have kids, go ahead and get them a professional email because the more and more obviously kids come around or people come up to start getting their emails, the less likely you're going to be able to find the email that you want

And so you can just as they're growing up, I have all of my kids' professional emails, you know, just their name

And so it's just something to help them move forward so they have that email and they can make whatever email they want on the side, but they have that professional one to keep

very smart. Would you have any other things that we need to bring up before we head out

Well, I just want to, once again, remind everybody that, you know, we want input from you

Okay. So topics like this, there are a million things that we could say about email

Overarching thing is make it easy for other people and create a positive impression for yourself

There you go. That's, that's it. Awesome. This has been a really fun show. It's been an interesting one and I even learned some stuff that I need to go back and now fix. So I really

appreciate that. It gives me more work I got to do. Thank you. There you go. Well, that's all we

have. Hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, hope to see you then. Goodbye. Take care. Thanks for

listening to the Reschooled podcast. Be sure to head over to reschooled.com for news and other

information on things we're getting into