How To Write an E-mail To Your Teacher
One of the things that can totally stress out an overthinker like me is formal e-mails. Somehow I always end up anxious about all kinds of useless things. Did I make everything clear? Wasn’t I rude? Over the years, I’ve learnt to become more comfortable with writing formal e-mails, but I thought I’d share some of my advice to make things a little easier for you as well :)
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3. Better too formal than too informal
4. You want to clearly mention:
Mention your full name and maybe your student number or administration number
They may be teach various courses! Make it easy for them to know who they’re communicating with.
Why it is that you’re writing
5. To continue on that, ask yourself why you’re writing, and most importantly what you wish to achieve by this. Make this the main point of your email: what do you expect of this teacher?
6. Don’t make it unnecessarily long
7. It’s okay to expect a certain degree of understanding in difficult situations
Don’t just assume your teachers will automatically backfire if you want to explain a personal situation to them. If they won’t listen at all, they are just being rude tbh. They should at least listen to what you have to say. What I’m aiming at here are e.g. situations where you have been dealing with panic attacks, maybe someone died, you’ve just been having a really hard time and your school work may have suffered under this. In these cases (or actually all cases) your (mental) health is more important than anything. Expect them to at least consider that.
8. Don’t worry too much; at the end of the day they’re just people
9. For longer emails you may want to repeat any requests at the end
Some more random questions you may end up asking yourself:
What if my prof mails back informally?
Personally, I prefer to maintain a formal writing style even in the mails take the form of “K, thnx.”. However if you feel like you and this teacher are well acquainted or if you don’t feel comfortable going all formal after an informal reply, that’s okay. Do what feels right for you, just keep in mind that you’re not two pals chatting – unless you are quite close ofc :)
What do I do when I forget the attachment?
Google mail has an amazing function these days that sees when you mention an attachment and stops you when you want to send the mail without it. If you don’t have this kind of function most mailboxes should come with an option to retrieve sent e-mails within a certain amount of time. If the ‘damage has been done’ (this happens to me aaaaall the time btw) you can always write a clear and short email in which you explain what happened and of course don’t forget to attach the attachment.
How do I start and end an email?
It kinda depends on your situation, again, and the level of formality. I personally tend to go with this:
[full name] [optionally followed by student number]
[sometimes I add my study + the year I’m in]
Note that I don’t use any official titles when I email e.g. professors. This is not because I don’t show respect or anything - it is just that this is the kind of addressing that I feel is most natural, neutral and generally acceptable in my context :)
I struggle with saying what I want to say. How do I write a good email?
If you just don’t know how to say whatever you want to say, just take a piece of paper and a pen and jot down what it is that you’re mailing for. Sometimes it happens that it is hard to request something, or to clearly explain a situation, or to write and email and not come over in a certain way. Try to make a short list of what you need to say.
Once you’ve got that, you want to keep the points I mentioned earlier in mind. Who are you, why are you mailing, and what do you wish to obtain? That should get you somewhere. In any case, just try to be clear and brisk.
Allright that’s all I have I hope this helps ;)
