The Honors Guide to E-mailing Your Professor
By Hunter Priest
So, you need to e-mail your professor. There are a couple reasons that this might have happened, and depending on which one applies to you, your approach is going to need to be a little bit different. However, no matter what justifies this endeavor, there are a few things that will always be true about your situation:
1. You need something that you cannot get with the resources available.
2. You are going to be taking up your professor’s time outside of class.
Both of these things are signs of failure on your part that will leave black marks on the essence of your being until the end of time.
As such, the first step to writing an e-mail is always trying as hard as you can not to write an e-mail. Look through the syllabus to see if that can resolve the issue that you’re having. Go through everything that’s been posted online and given to you in your hand-outs to double check that a solution to your problem isn’t there as well. If the answer isn’t there, consider consulting the library or making a blood sacrifice to an elder god before you begin the process of writing an e-mail, as both of these extreme options are preferable to the alternative.
TYPES OF E-MAILS
There are three types of e-mails you could write to your professor, each of which is more of a grave misfortune to invoke upon yourself and others than the last.
The first is an e-mail you write to ask for clarification. If you are writing this e-mail, it is because there is an urgent matter of logistics or detail that you cannot wait for the next class period to approach your professor about. It demands an answer immediately. You haven’t committed any errors or done any wrongs yet, but you are acknowledging to both yourself and the professor that you could if your message is not answered. In essence, this is a threat. Writing this e-mail should not be taken lightly.
The second type of e-mail you could write is to ask for assistance. If you write this e-mail, it is because you are in the process of correcting a grievous error on your part, one that you cannot fix alone. You lack understanding. That alone is an admission of fault. You did not pay enough attention in class, you did not study hard enough, and you must now pay a price for your arrogance that is too steep for you to bear on your own. Thus you ask for mercy, for grace, for help that you do not deserve. If you are writing this e-mail, your situation can get worse, but it is still possible for you to come back from this.
The third type of e-mail is something that cannot be taken lightly. It is the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary’s, the last possible resort. It is the domain of the awful and the sullied, and whether you ended up here by mistake or not, it is never somewhere you should ever have gone. It is a request for an extension on an assignment. If you send this e-mail, you have disrespected yourself, you have disrespected your professor, and you have disrespected your entire field of study. It’s kind of completely over for you. God forbid you have to do something like this twice, especially if you have to send it to the same person. You’re screwed.
If you have to send the first kind of e-mail, you can still make it to the other side on cordial terms with your professor. If you have to send the second, you can escape with some dignity so long as you play your cards right. For the third, it is possible to avoid dropping out and wandering into the woods to be eaten by wolves if you abandon your ego and follow every letter of this guide to a tee.
If you have cause to read beyond this point, just know that as long as you keep going, one day you will be able to live with yourself again.
Assuming that Pan has not seen fit to bless you with the madness of knowledge and the power of wisdom, you have found yourself in dire straits and an unenviable position. You have found yourself in the position to write an e-mail.
STEP 1: INTRODUCTION
The introduction is a prelude to the prelude. It establishes your relationship with the person upon whose life you are about to intrude. The importance of this cannot be overstated. If you get it wrong, you will have failed before your first sentence.
You will have several options for how to introduce the letter. Depending on your situation, some of them may or may not be more appropriate than others. However, you must always proceed with caution regardless. To assist you in this endeavor, I will provide some common introductions and walk you through the effectiveness of each.
Number 1: “Dear Professor Name,”
This is the default greeting, so you may think that there’s no going wrong here. You would be mistaken. This is a dangerous introduction.
Consider the individual words being used here. “Dear Professor.” You’re saying this professor is dear to you? Does this not strike you as a little bit much for this sort of interaction? That’s a lot of emotion for an e-mail such as this one. You may as well just write “I love you” in the subject line. It’s inappropriate.
If this professor was really as “dear” to you as you claim, you wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, now would you? This is what we in the business call “parasocial.” Do not use this introduction.
Number 2: “Hi Professor,”
If you haven’t forsaken the name of all the values you once held and asked for special treatment and you aren’t writing this e-mail to do so, this is an acceptable introduction. Take extreme caution that this isn’t too friendly for what you need though—the lack of direct reference to their name could be a sign of over-familiarity and disrespect in the wrong context.
Number 3: “Hello!”
If you use this greeting, your professor will flay you alive and you will deserve it. This doesn’t reference their name. It doesn’t reference their title or position. What are you even doing here? Are you some kind of clown? You’d be lucky if your computer didn’t delete its own operating system the second you tried to put this as your introduction out of pure shame for being associated with you. If you consider using this there is something deeply wrong with you.
Number 4: “Greetings Professor Name,”
What are you, a Victorian orphan? Get real, kid. Nobody talks like this. If you do, people will think you are strange. Because you are. Ultimately, if you find yourself in a category three e-mail situation, you don’t deserve to be writing an e-mail in the first place. Just pick one of these introductions at random and hope that they don’t blow you up with their mind when they read it, because they can do that, and if they do, you won’t get an obituary.
STEP 2: FIRST SENTENCE
The introduction establishes your relationship with the recipient, but the first sentence establishes the tone of the e-mail itself. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Getting down to brass tacks and discussing matters of business immediately can come off as rude, so it’s a good idea not to start off with something directly relating to your purpose. If you didn’t put some variation of “hello” in your introduction, you can potentially start with hello as your first sentence before segueing into the more relevant topic. This is efficient, good form. It will waste less of your professor’s time, and as a result, burn less of your soul away. However, if you did put “hello” in your introduction and you use it again here, your professor will have grounds to expel you on the spot and report you to the cops for committing a felony.
This is where the necessity of the pleasantry makes itself known. It acts as a bulwark against the crushing tide of what you have done or are about to do. If you are writing a category one or two e-mail, one pleasantry will suffice, and any more than that is just needless drivel that is burning more and more of your professor’s valuable time. If you are writing a category three e-mail it is imperative that you include as many pleasantries as possible. Your first sentence should be a first paragraph. “I hope this e-mail finds you well,” is a classic, reliable phrase for this purpose. Use these pleasantries to remind your professor not only that you are a person, but that they are a person, because what you are about to do could make a monster out of anybody.
If the worst has come to pass and you are writing a category three e-mail to somebody for the second time, then no amount of pleasantries can save you. Start your e-mail with an apology. Follow it with one or two lines expressing sincere remorse for the situation, like “It pains me to have to send this e-mail,” or “I truly regret to be in this situation with you again. I am not proud to be writing this but I hope you don’t think any less of me for it.” This is an empty prayer. They, and everyone else, will think less of you for it. Endure it with a stone face if you ever want to have a life worth living again.
STEP 3: ACTUALLY EXPLAINING YOURSELF
This is the part of the e-mail where you actually tell your teacher what’s happening and what you want from them. The importance of this cannot be overstated. You may be wondering if you really have the right to want anything from your teacher out of this at all. This is a good instinct, because you don’t! But it’s also a misleading one. The only thing in the world worse than an e-mail with a point is an e-mail without a point, which is what you’ve written if you don’t actually want the teacher to do anything. You will simply just have to make peace with asking for something you don’t deserve.
You must ask yourself the following questions: What prompted you to ask for this time out of the professor’s day? What situation are you trying to resolve? This may not be necessary to include in the e-mail, but having it in mind while you write will help you to understand what you need to tell this professor.
It might also help to ask yourself: How did you get here? What choices led you to this, the darkest moment in your entire life? The answer may or may not be relevant to the professor, but explaining it to them could grant you more sympathy in their eyes regardless. Sympathy for you is a premium resource in your situation, but weigh that carefully against the fact that every word you make the professor read is time that they could be spending doing literally anything else.
If you’re writing a category one e-mail to ask for clarification, it’s probably better to cut to the chase and just ask the question straight out with as little delay as possible. The one exception to this is when your question requires extra context to properly answer. In that case, it is possible that your question is unanswerable, and you may be better off offering yourself to a convent or perhaps becoming a monk of some kind.
STEP 4: APOLOGIZING FOR EXISTING AND BEGGING FOR MERCY
This is the step where you properly account for the unbearable weight of sin that rests upon your back for being here in the first place. It is more relevant if you are writing a category three e-mail than if you are writing a category one or two e-mail, but it will never hurt to add this to a message.
By doing this, you are far more likely to get what you need from your professor.
It will help your case if you acknowledge your worthless soul so that your professor knows that you are aware of your predicament. Show them you know your standing with them by explaining to them every mistake you’ve ever made in their class. Apologize profusely for each of them in as many words as you possibly can. Once you’ve done that, it could help to make it clear that you also know you are unworthy of their forgiveness. This can be done in several ways, but attaching an itemized list of every sin that you’ve ever committed is always an easy solution. If you can, the legitimacy of this offering would be improved dramatically by notarizing it or obtaining the signature of a spiritual authority in your community. It’s possible that attempting to own up to a couple of things that you didn’t do could go a long way to curry much needed favor as well—being willing to take the fall for something shows character, after all.
Now that you’ve apologized for all the bad actions you’ve ever taken, apologize for every other action you’ve ever taken too. Every decision you’ve made in your life has led you to this moment, and even if you don’t deserve anything in the world, at the very least, your professor deserves a better student than you. Make sure to properly show remorse as well by apologizing again every two sentences for the contents of those two sentences, and also for making your professor read those two sentences.
Finally, to truly drive home how sorry you are to have ever come into this situation, offer anything at all you can think of that would offset the enormous moral weight that an act of mercy on your professor’s part would have. A beginner’s mistake here is to offer your life in harakiri. I’ve done it before too, so I will warn you now and save you the trouble of trying it: for some reason, this is typically frowned upon in polite society. Try to avoid doing so if at all possible.
STEP 5: CONCLUSION
This step is markedly more simple than its brethren, but the importance of it cannot possibly be overstated. A conclusion to anything ties together everything that you’ve said so far into a neat little bow, and an e-mail is no different. As such, it’s important to conclude your e-mail in the same way that any reasonable person would: another, further apology and prostration of yourself at their feet to really pull together all those other apologies.
It is at this point necessary to acknowledge that you do not deserve their help and affirm that they have no obligation to give it to you. You must say that you can manage on your own without their mercy, even if you have to lie to do so. This is a necessary display of humility that shows you know that you were wrong to write this e-mail in the first place, and simply didn’t have any other option available to you. It’s just the polite thing to do.
Above all else however, you must sign off your e-mail with “Sincerely,” followed by your name. This is to show how sincere you are. If you do not do this, they will not know that you were being sincere, and you will be expelled from the school the moment you send the e-mail to your professor. The IRS will repossess everything you own and you will die in a freak train accident under the light of the moon before the cold night is over.
WHAT NEXT?
Writing an e-mail is hard work, and if you deserve to take a break, now would be the appropriate time to do so. Expecting your professor to take a day or two to get to your e-mail, you will likely wander off towards other work until you find yourself surprised to see a response from your professor only 2 hours later. It is more than likely that compared to the minimum 3 paragraphs you sent your professor, their response will seem comically small—two lines at most with the most favorable reply you could have possibly hoped for.
In truth, the e-mail you sent was likely ridiculous. It was absurdly overbearing, hopelessly dramatic, and honestly a little bit silly. You are here to learn; professors are here to teach. They get paid to do so. If there’s something they can do to help you learn, against all odds, they’re probably more than willing to do so as long as you’re reasonably polite about it.
And it was probably pretty weird to send an itemized list of every sin you’ve ever committed.
No matter what your circumstances are coming into the process of writing an e-mail, so long as you put the proper care into your learning, there are a few things that will always be true about your situation.
1. You need something that you cannot get with the resources available.
2. Your professor has given you a channel of communication to reach out to them in case you have any difficulties.
Any professor worth their salt is going to recognize this. Treat them with respect, and they will treat you with respect. That’s all there is to it.