The essay was 100% accurate when it came to the fact that no one has ever really been taught how to write an email.  I know that whenever I’m emailing professors, I’m always nervous about whether I’m being too casual or too formal just because no one has ever told us “this is right” or “this is wrong.”  However, I don’t think that students and professors have completely different viewpoints regarding email; I just think students were never told how to approach email, and they struggle to understand the formality necessary, especially since this changes with everyone they talk to.

I think the reason why universities and schools mostly use email as a way of communicating is because it is safe to assume everyone has access to email.  Some schools have tried to communicate through texts (remind101), but this only worked for reminders or one way conversations because students could not respond to these messages; they would have to email their teachers if they had any concerns.  Email is the best form of communication we have right now when it comes to contacting our professors, even if it is one of the older medias we have.  It’s simple, free, and everyone pretty much has it.  It doesn’t cost anything to send an email as opposed to texts, and it is something that people are already accustomed to and have access to (the school provides it in most university settings) as opposed to apps or social media that some people don’t have or want to create.

Today, all I really only use email for is school. I have a setting so that whenever someone sends me an email, it also comes in as a text message to my phone because I rarely ever check my email. Most people that need to contact me will either text or call me. This being said, I don’t think schools will ever really switch from emailing. I would just feel very uncomfortable texting my professor because texting seems way more personal than emailing.

I think that many students are so accustomed to new types of communication, like texting, where communication is very brief and to the point that it becomes hard to switch back into writing a long, formal email. It seems so pointless to add all of these other words when really you just want to ask your question and send the email. But, I do understand where professors are coming from when they want emails to be written in a certain way. Just like you would talk to your professor much more formally than you would talk to your best friend, emails and communication should be more formal too.

My school was one of the rare schools that actually taught their students how to properly email a teacher. In 7^th grade, one of my required computer classes actually had a unit on how to properly email teachers. The format I learned was pretty similar to the format given in “How to Email Your Professor”, and it has been ingrained in my mind ever since I learned it. I would probably have no idea how to email a teacher if I had not learned it in this class. I think it is important that students be taught how to properly write an email especially if teachers are expecting it to be written in a certain way.

Prior to college, email was not a large part of my life. If I had a question to ask my teacher in high school it could most likely wait until the next day where I would see them in class. Now that I only see my professors three times maximum per week I have begun to utilize email more often. Email in college serves as the only form of communication between professors and students  which makes it so important to not offend your professors while emailing them. While emailing your professor one needs to write the way they would talk to their professor in person.

The article was not lying when it stated that our generation has simply never been taught how to format emails. Whenever I have to write an email I stick to my same format that I have grown to be comfortable with. After reading this article I have come to the realization that I am not half bad at writing emails, but most definitely not perfect. I now know that I have to add details about which class I am in and at what time, which makes sense considering how many students my professor may have. I think to better ones email writing they should put themselves in the shoes of the individual they are emailing.

Professors may have different views of emailing than students do. I think this has to do more with the age gap than anything else. Professors look at email as a much more professional form of communication while students do not necessarily understand the formality of email. By being taught the proper formatting of emailing, students will become more efficient at emailing as well as eliminate the opportunity to offend their professor, which is the worst case scenario.

Personally, I do not think email is becoming or will become a legacy medium. The form of email between professor and student holds a standard of professionalism that texting, Facebook, and WhatsApp lack.

Students in high school were never taught how to properly email teachers which is why they enter college clueless about email etiquette. However, the high school teacher-student relationship is probably more relaxed and casual compared to the college professor-student relationship. Whenever I would email teachers in high school though I would always try to keep the email as respectful as possible because I knew they would be taking time out of their day to read and respond to me. I have never thought about casually addressing a teacher in email because I understand there is a professional relationship that still needs to be maintained.

I think especially in college that professors need to be addressed in correct email etiquette because as our educators they need to be shown respect in their rightful positions of authority and expertise. Email etiquette also shows that students know the proper way to address others in a professional manner, such as potential employers. Professors are used to writing in such a formal manner because they have to address other professors and coworkers with the same respect when making a special request. For students, they are used to addressing each other via texts in shorthand notation so formal emails in a letter template seem almost foreign.

Hopefully email as a media stays relevant because texting professors or Facebook messaging them would seem really weird and too casual for an educational setting.

I personally do not see email as a legacy medium. While I may no longer email my friends and grandma on the regular, I still send and receive emails every single day. After reading the articles, I can easily relate to the ignorance of the student writing the email to their professor. During my junior year of high school I did dual enrollment, so I was taking classes at a local college. After taking my final exam in Sociology, my grade dropped from a 95 to an 89.46. I was very upset because I had never gotten a B before and I had worked so hard in that class. I emailed my profesor basically asking if he could possibly bump my grade up so that way I can end with an A. This email was the most unprofessional email I had ever written. It basically went similar to this: “Hey it’s Dakota Gulasa. I was wondering if you could possibly bump my grade up so that I will end with an A. I don’t want it to mess up my high school GPA.”

My profesor was livid! He made me meet with him to learn email etiquette because it was that bad. This issue may seem familiar with several college students. I believe that it suggests that young adults in this decade are living in a world of texting and messaging. They are not accustomed to formal writing when communicating with another individual. This leads to emails similar to mine where the student is basically texting their professor as if they are best friends. I can understand why professors get so outraged over this situation, because I am sure it happens very often.

I think that universities and professors prefer email is because any other type of media would simply be too personal. Having a professors phone number, Facebook, or even WhatsApp account information would cross a certain professional line. I would be very uncomfortable having to text my professor. I would much rather type out an email and have to wait for a response, then be able to send my profesor a text expecting an immediate answer.

All in all, I’m glad that I’ve learned my lesson about emailing professors and hope that next time I need my grade bumped up, it will happen without a problem.

I can distinctly remember begging my parents to allow me to create a myspace page in the fourth grade. Everyone who was anyone had one, and I couldn’t resist to follow the trend. I somehow convinced them to let me create one. When I was in the fourth grade, MySpace was all that people would talk about. It was an engaging, yet simple website that everyone was familiar with. Here we are nine years later, and look where MySpace is now. What was once an enormous media platform for individuals to socialize and interact has now became a graveyard of untouched profiles. As time passed, people began to transition to a different platform – Twitter. The idea behind a “legacy media” says that every media will eventually go out of date – typically within 10 years. Even though Twitter is the biggest rage currently, by the year 2030 will anyone still be using this platform, or will we have moved on to the next BIG THING? We can already see this transition beginning to happen. In the last three years, Twitter’s number of active users has began to drop. The drop has not been extremely significant, but I believe that it may be the beginning of a new legacy media.

There are several forms of legacy media that I’ve used and still use in my life.  The main one being books.  From the moment i was conceived to now I’m still reading books (my dad used to read to me while I was still in the womb).  I don’t feel like they’ll ever completely disappear or be replaced by eBooks or the internet mostly because of the “sentimental” value that they have.  Physical books can be passed down or held onto for generations; my family has kept my dad’s children’s bible forever even though its falling apart, and I’m pretty sure my brother tried to eat it when he was a baby, but it still sits on our bookshelf, along with a lot of other books we read as children.

Today, most the books that I am reading are textbooks that I’ve been assigned, but I still prefer physical books over online textbooks.  I feel like they allow for a better way of learning and retaining information as opposed to reading information off of a screen.

The other form of legacy media that had a huge impact on my life was VHS tapes.  Growing up, that’s all I would watch, and I could sit there and watch the same movie again and again if I wanted to.  Every Disney movie and sesame street movie you can think of is somewhere in a basket in my parents’ closet.  There’s still times now when someone will ask, “Have you seen (any classic movie)?” and my mom will respond, “Yeah!!! We have it on VHS!” and then she’ll sadly come to the realization that it really doesn’t matter because we don’t even have a VHS player anymore.