Professor e-mails

[theyellowhobbit]

Is anyone online right now (11:30 AM EST on Thursday August 30th, 2007) who is good at writing e-mails to important people? I'm writing a short e-mail to my HDS academic advisor and I need a little help phrasing it because either I'm notoriously bad at it, or I'm not actually notoriously bad at it but I always agonize over these kinds of tasks and make myself believe that I'm notoriously bad at them.

Comment here, or e-mail me, or IM me if you actually can.

Thanks.

*Edit* This is a task that for a normal person will only take about 5 minutes. It's just something that takes *me* forever. But if you normal people help me you only need to give me about 5 minutes of your time. It's a really short e-mail!

I did it myself. I think it came out alright. It was really this simple:

Dear Professor M____,

Would it be possible to set up an appointment to meet with you before the semester begins? I would like to discuss my course of study both for this semester and for the program overall before I register for classes. I will be in Cambridge starting this coming Sunday (9/2). I am free to meet any day of next week, at pretty much any time.

Thanks and looking forward to meeting you,

~Rachel Adler

And that took me 20 minutes! This is how much I suck at life.

Comments

[tourogal.livejournal.com]

I would have said, "at your convenience" rather than "at pretty much any time". otherwise, its ok.

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this is what I get for doing things myself, as well as being away from academia for the summer and thus forgetting how to write e-mails in an academic setting.

But at least I can spell, punctuate, and use correct grammar. That saying something, right? (Okay, I guess it isn't a big deal if we're comparing me with other people at Harvard. I assume everyone there can spell, punctuate, and use proper grammar. It's more of a big deal in comparing me to the people on Frumster who have e-mailed me this summer. This is how much I've lowered my standards.)

[tourogal.livejournal.com]

good point.