An academic's occupational hazards include having to wade through a lot of unsolicited e-mails from people one doesn't know; in my case, quite a big chunk of these mails is from undergraduate students seeking summer internships. I find most of them are poorly written (I wouldn't blame them; as an undergrad, I was quite pathetic too in this department), and I have seen so many of them in a strange language which, I later learned, is called SMS/Orkut.
I have often wished they had access to advice on how to communicate with others (i.e., how to make a 'cold call') in a professional way -- particularly when they seek some help/favour from the person they are writing to. Please don't get me wrong here; I'm not arguing here for letters in stilted prose that start with 'respected sir' and end with 'your obedient servant' (though I do like obedient servants who are respectful to their masters). I will be happy with something that's even 10 % compliant with Eszter Hargittai's advice.
You might want to read a counterexample that violates so many of Hargittai's rules.
3 Comments:
(pertinent to the post) yes, I have had and am having this experience every semester end, when I receive a bunch of emails of this sort. I used to reply to all of these in the negative but that only made their number double...
I get my share of emails too. Prospective students seeking advice, sending me all that they have done in life and asking me to estimate the chances of admission. What can one do in such a case? And there are people who eat up all the vowels. The next time, I'll tell them to put back all vowels in place and send it again.
Hey, this one made me wade through mails accumulated over the last few months in my "sent mail" folder!
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