Another reason not to be called "Doctor"

Laura L. Callahan was very proud of her Ph.D. When she received it a few years ago, she promptly rewrote her official biography to highlight the academic accomplishment, referring to it not once or twice but nine times in a single-page summary of her career. And she never let her employees at the Labor Department, where she served as deputy chief information officer, forget it, even demanding that they call her "Doctor."

From an article on diploma mills and the widespread problem of phony academic credentials among government employees. "Doctor" Callahan made it to the position of deputy chief information officer in the Department of Homeland Security before being forced to resign.

Two actresses

For anyone checking in from last semester--

Ruth Warrick (Emily, the first Mrs. Kane in Citizen Kane) and Virginia Mayo (Marie Derry in The Best Years of Our Lives) just died. The links are to the obituaries in the New York Times.

[Reminder: To read articles from the New York Times, type mediajunkie for both your name and password. At bugmenot.com, you can find passwords for many free sites that require registration.]

Stanley Lombardo interview

3009 students: You can find the text of an interview with Stanley Lombardo in this issue of Jacket, an on-line poetry magazine.

Much of what's said might not click, but I think that anyone who's started reading Homer can pick up something from this interview. Students who've read the interview after reading Homer for a while have told me that they wish they had read it when they started reading Homer.

Jacket, the home of this interview, is edited and published by John Tranter in Australia.

Odysseus and odium

From the word-a-day list offered by wordsmith.org:

odium (O-dee-uhm) noun

1. Hatred accompanied by contempt.
2. A state of infamy or disgrace.

[From Latin odium (hatred), from odisse (to hate). Ultimately from Indo-European root od- (to hate) that is also the source of the words hate, annoy, noisome, and ennui.]

MLK

Here's a link to the most-requested materials at the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.

You'll find texts and audio clips (Acrobat, Quicktime, and Realmedia) of "Letter from Birmingham Jail," "I Have a Dream," King's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "Beyond Vietnam," and "I've Been to the Mountaintop."

How to improve writing (no. 2 in a series)

From an invitation to an evening of financial aid information:

This is open to all studetns and parents that are going to be attending in the fall and to those that have decided to further their education elsewhere.

It's always good to avoid this alone--it's a weak word and often vague in its reference (and here I thank Jim Doyle, James P. Doyle, Dr. Doyle, who called me on this when I was a college freshman).

Studetns is a reminder to always use a spellchecker. Though it can't substitute for proofreading, it'll at least find some typos.

Who not that is appropriate for people.

The real problem here though is that the writer hasn't read the sentence carefully--it's students who'll be attending in the fall, not their parents. An improved version might read as follows:

This evening is open to students who will be attending in the fall, students who have decided to further their education elsewhere, and all parents.

Link » Other How to improve writing posts, via Pinboard

Kenneth Koch

3703 students: You can read about the author of Making Your Own Days in this issue of Jacket, an on-line magazine of contemporary poetry (the on-line magazine, really). The piece by Charles North is probably the best place to start. Don't miss the link to "Popeye and William Blake Fight to the Death," a recording of a spontaneous collaboration between Koch and Allen Ginsberg (in front of a standing-room-only audience). Koch's quick wit in coming up with rhymes is almost scary.

Koch's exuberance is evident even in his handwriting, as you can see here.

Capeesh?

Once I figured out how to spell this word (which came up in my 9:00 Myth and Culture class), it was pretty easy to find its origins on-line. From dictionary.com:

Main Entry: capeesh
Part of Speech: interjection
Definition: do you understand?
Example: I will call you when dinner is ready. Capeesh?
Etymology: Italian capisce "understand"
Source: Webster's New Millennium Dictionary of English, Preview Edition (v 0.9.5)

And from word-detective.com:

What they're actually saying is "coppish" (kuh-PEESH, also sometimes spelled "capeesh"), which is definitely not Welsh (too many vowels, just for starters). It's Italian-American slang for "understand." "Coppish" comes from the Italian word "capisce," based on the verb "capire," meaning "to understand," and can be used as either a question or an answer. Like many dialect words born in immigrant communities, "coppish" affirms a bond between the speaker and listener. "Coppish?" thus often really means, "I know you understand, because you're one of us." And the reply "Coppish!" means "You bet, no problem, you can count on me."

Capeesh?

Capeesh!

How to e-mail a professor

[By a professor, for students. As of July 2023, this post has been visited by more than 800,000 readers from at least 145 countries and territories. And it’s been anthologized in The Student Writer: Editor and Critic (McGraw Hill, 2009) and The Simon & Schuster Short Prose Reader (2011). If you teach, you might also want to read this post: How to e-mail a student. In 2023, email is about twice as common in print as e-mail, but I still like the old-school hyphen.]

I’ve read enough e-mails to know that many college students could benefit from some guidelines for writing to a professor. Here they are:

Write from your college or university e-mail account. That immediately lets your professor see that your e-mail is legitimate and not spam. A cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

Include the course number in your subject line. “Question about 3009 assignment” is clear and sounds genuine, while “a question” looks like spam. “Question about English assignment” or “question about assignment,” without identifying the class you’re in, may leave your professor with the chore of figuring that out. For someone teaching large lecture classes, that might mean reading through hundreds of names on rosters. But even for a professor with smaller classes, it’s a drag to get an e-mail that merely says “I’m in your English class and need the assignment.” All your English professor’s classes are English classes; your professor needs to know which one is yours.

Consider, in light of this advice, the following examples:

An e-mail from “qtpie2005” with the subject line “question.”

An e-mail from a university account with the subject line “question about English 2011 essay.”

Which one looks legitimate? Which one looks like spam?

Think about what you’re saying. Most students are not accustomed to writing to their professors. Here are some ways to do it well:

Choose an appropriate greeting. “Hi/Hello Professor [Blank]” is always appropriate. Substitute “Dear” and you’ve ended up writing a letter; leave out “Hi” and your tone is too brusque.

Avoid rote apologies for missing class. Most professors are tired of hearing those standard apologies and acts of contrition. If you missed class because of some especially serious or sad circumstances, it might be better to mention that in person than in an e-mail.

Ask politely. “Could you e-mail me the page numbers for the next reading? Thanks!” is a lot better than “I need the assignment.”

Proofread what you’ve written. You want your e-mail to show you in the best possible light.

Sign with your full name, course number, and meeting time.

        Maggie Simpson
        English 3703, MWF 10:00

Signing is an obvious courtesy, and it eliminates the need for stilted self-identification (“I am a student in your such-and-such class”).

Two don’ts, and one last do:

Don’t ask AI to write an e-mail for you. At least not if you want your e-mail to sound like the work of a human being.

Don’t send unexpected attachments. It’s bad form. Attaching an essay with a request that your professor look it over is very bad form. Arrange to meet your professor during office hours or by appointment instead. It’s especially bad form to send an e-mail that says “I won’t be in class today,” with a paper or some other coursework attached. Think about it: Your professor is supposed to print out your essay because you’re not coming to class?

Do say thanks. When you get a response, just hit Reply and say “Thanks,” or a little bit more if that’s appropriate. The old subject line (which will now have a “Re:” in front) will make the context clear. I don’t think that you need to include a greeting with a short reply, at least not if you refer to your professor in your reply. And you don’t need to identify yourself by course number and meeting time again.

It’s easy to overlook an e-mail message or have it disappear into a spam folder, so it’s always appropriate to acknowledge that someone’s message came through. It’s also plain courtesy to say thanks. (Your professor will remember it too.) When you reply, you should delete almost everything of your professor’s reply (quoting everything is rarely appropriate in e-mail). Leave just enough to make the original context clear.

So what would a good e-mail to a professor look like?

Hi Professor Leddy,

I’m working on my essay on William Carlos Williams and I’m not sure what to make of the last stanza of “Spring and All.” I’m stuck trying to figure out what “It” is. Do you have a suggestion? Thanks!

Maggie Simpson
Eng 3703, MWF 10:00

And a subsequent note of thanks:

>  “It” is most likely spring, or life itself. But have
>  you looked up “quicken”? That’ll probably
>  make “It” much clearer.

It sure did. Thanks for your help, Professor.

Maggie Simpson

[How to e-mail a professor is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 License. Revised September 26 and October 29, 2005; February 4, 2006; July 10, 2023; April 15, 2024.]

Other useful stuff for students:

Beware of the saurus
Grammarly and WhiteSmoke (save your money)
Granularity for students
How to answer a question in class
How to be a student a professor will remember (for the right reasons)
How to do well on a final exam
How to do horribly on a final exam
How to enter a classroom
How to punctuate a sentence
How to punctuate more sentences
How to talk to a professor
How to unstuff a sentence
Is this honor society legitimate?
Rachel’s tips for success in college
“Rewording”
Rule 7
Seeing professors clearly
Slow down and read
Study = hard work
Studying alone, really alone
Syllabus week
Yo, professor!

And for professors:

How to e-mail a student

And if you want to read the most recent posts on Orange Crate Art, here’s the front page.

[Some further thoughts: I’m astonished by the amount of interest in this post--over 1,600 visits in the past two days. Then again, there really isn’t anything very similar on-line--or if there is, I haven’t found it--so if what I’ve written is useful, well, I’m happy.

My one purpose in writing these guidelines was to help college students write to their professors with greater ease and maturity and a better sense of audience (instead of “i am a student in your class”). They’re guidelines for writing to a professor, any professor, in the absence of other guidelines. And they’re meant to keep a student in the high esteem of any professor to whom that student is writing.

Most of the reasoning behind the guidelines is omitted for concision. But I’ll elaborate a little here. Why, for instance, write from a university account? A professor filtering spam will almost certainly also have a filter to okay mail from addresses from her or his “edu.” So if you want your mail to get through, an “edu” account is a smart choice. Many schools require students to use those accounts for official school business already. Writing from an appropriate address is smart practice for the future too. (I always say something when I see a tacky or juvenile e-mail address on an otherwise polished student résumé.)

Why say “Hi/Hello Professor [Blank]?” Well, what should a student call a professor? Some people like “Doctor”; some don’t. Some people don’t have a doctorate. Some people don’t explain any of that to students. There was a great piece in the Chronicle about this subject not long ago--“What Should We Call the Professor?” Professor, in the absence of any other guidelines, seems like a good choice.

Having received many telegraphic one-sentence e-mails, often with no greeting, no thank-you, and no signature, I find them weirdly depersonalized: “I need the assignment.” I do think a question is better, better even than a polite “Please send the assignment,” because the question is more conversational, more human. (But if a student e-mails me and says “I need the assignment,” I send it.)

Why sign with your name, class, and meeting time? It’s a courtesy, yes, but it also avoids the awkward “My name is . . . , and I am a student in your such-and-such class,” all of which is taken care of in the signature. It occurs to me that “My name is . . . , and I am a student in . . .” is telling evidence of the unfamiliarity of e-mail as a way for students to communicate with professors.

I appreciate the point several commenters have made about a follow-up thank-you being unneeded. Still, a lot of e-mail doesn’t get read, and the follow-up, to my mind, closes the loop. Many people do a follow-up by using the subject line to say thanks, often followed by the abbreviation “eom” (end of message). That seemed to me too arcane to recommend. But I do like the idea of closing the loop by saying yes, I got it, thanks.

I hope that this post leads to much more talking on the part of professors and students about communicating by e-mail. All reports from the business world point to enormous problems of clarity, correctness, and decorum with e-mail writing. Maybe things can start to go better in college.

Added September 30, 2005; revised October 29, 2005 and April 8, 2024.]

On the relevance of the classics

At Chicago's Wilbur Wright College, where the majority of students are immigrants, nonwhite, or both, Professor Bruce Gans runs a successful Great Books Curriculum, with an enrollment of about 900. Students in this program, compared with their schoolmates, greatly improve their writing skills, have far higher graduation rates, and are better prepared to transfer to four-year colleges. Meanwhile, Earl Shorris has developed the Clemente Course, a classical curriculum aimed specifically at people living in poverty. His first syllabus ranged from Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Thucydides' Peloponnesian War to William Blake and D. H. Lawrence. And yes, Plato is intensely relevant to former drug addicts. "Those of us in the grip of addiction use this process to rethink our lives," one student explains. "Socrates makes clear that you have to have the courage to examine yourself and to stand up for something. A lot of us have justified our weaknesses for too long a time."

From an essay by Jonathan Rose, "The Classics in the Slums."