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.