All right y’all…
Let’s get real for a second. We’re in college, and most students somehow made it here without capitalizing the first letter at the beginning of a sentence and ending sentences without punctuation. No tea no shade but…. it’s laughable in peer reading, and professors (if they’re bold enough) will dog you out to everyone they come in contact with (yes, including fellow students). Some of us are in our teens, and a lot of us are in our twenties. I’m calling all of y’all out! I get it, we all fall short sometimes. We gotta email our professors on some begging type sh*t. I mean honestly, what are we really emailing our professors for, besides to ask questions about things we didn’t pay too much attention to in class? We’ve all been there, BUT coming at them sideways with grammatical errors and informal “greetings” can have you stuck looking foolish.
So here we go: THIS is how you compose an email to your professor!
THE VERY FIRST THING you wanna think about is…Do you really need to email them? Did you… you know, read the syllabus? YES, college students! Read your syllabus! If you haven’t yet, then PLEASE do your professor and YOURself a favor: READ IT (but also hear me out in the next 6 steps).
1. Be sure you’re emailing the right email address. There are a few students who also share a name with a professor or someone “important” down here. You can also be off a letter in the professor’s name or even off in the name of the school (which is questionable if you attend the school and can’t spell the name). If you don’t read your syllabus, it’s easy to send something important to someone who is not. It happens.
2. State your case in the subject bar. This is where your professors will tune in to whatever you’re begging about. Make sure it’s in CLEAR Standard English. I’m pretty sure you know what that is, so I shouldn’t have to explain too much.
3. Now we’ve come to the greeting! This is the first golden sentence that they’ll read before they get to the sob story called the body. “Wassup?”, “Yo”, “Ayyy”, “?” and all the other emojis/words y’all use in your text convos won’t work with the Petty Betties you call your professors. Let’s act like we actually like our professors and be a little formal: “Hello, Professor______!” is the best move! Saying anything where you’re acknowledging their character is excellent.
4. Get to the nitty gritty of it. These are the rest of your golden sentences. State your case on a bigger scale in your body but leave out the details that will expose you to filth (this is called constraint). Make sure you get everything across so the professor won’t have to ask you a billion times about what you’re talking about ‘cause they won’t ask to clarify if they don’t have the energy to. They make it known that they don’t have the energy to.
5. Once you have everything typed and ready to send, DO NOT SEND IT IMMEDIATELY! Take some time to read over your email. Check for grammatical errors. Make sure the email is cohesive. Actually, do that with everything you send. Please.
OH BEFORE YOU SEND IT… close out the email in a formal farewell. Using words like “Sincerely”, “Thank you!”, or any type of farewell acknowledging the professor respectfully will get you some brownie points, but brownie points nonetheless.
The last touch will be your first and last name to bring it all together.
6. SEND IT. Exhale. Go on about your business.
Hope this helped one of y’all out there. If not, then you probably feel some type of way. It’s all good.
With love and shade,
-Marissa Auriell