Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with professors

Reference me that recommendation, please.

ElectricBlue — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:43:54 -0800

How should I approach my professors for recommendation/reference letters for a job that doesn't yet exist? I'm trying to wrap my mind around the situation, but I can't quite figure out how to work everything out in a tidy manner. So... Hivemind to the rescue! :)

I'm a current senior in college. I'm spending my last semester abroad. My study abroad lasts from March until August. So while my friends are graduating and "hitting the pavement," I'll have a very late start in hunting for a job.

Alas, I don't know what job I'll go into after college. It'll hopefully be something creative--writing, graphic design, etc.--but that's all I know.

I've been staying on-campus for the past six weeks. But I'll be kicked out of the dorms on Sunday. (Literally: someone's moving in my room that following Monday!)

My problems:

1) I'm leaving campus this Sunday. This week could be the last time I ever see my professors.
2) I'd love some recommendation/reference letters for future jobs from my professors while I'm still fresh in their minds. The problem is, how can they write a letter without knowing what job I want?
2b) Should I ask for them to emphasize my character? Traits that are in both fields of graphic design and writing?
3) There's no way that they can complete a letter in the next few days. I was thinking of giving my professors a SASE addressed to my parents' house so that they can send the rec letters at their leisure. But is that the best idea?
4) Am I overthinking this? ;)

So, to summarize: I think that it would be a great idea to go ahead and get some rec/ref letters from my professors before I leave for a study abroad. That way, when I get back from Europe, I can immediately hunt for a job. But I'm leaving for Europe soon, and I have no idea what job I'll be hunting for.

If you have any advice, that'd be awesome. Thanks in advance!

Advice on Emailing Professors When Applying to Grad School?

davidstandaford — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:40:09 -0800

Any advice concerning email communication with professors who I'll be contacting at the various schools that I will be applying to for PhD programs in Political Science? As part of my application process I've been identifying the schools that I want to apply to and the professors at each campus that I would want to work with. I've been reading some of their recent writings so I can begin contacting them via email.

At the moment, my plan is to email them sometime soon letting them know I'm thinking of applying to their school, my planned research statement, and letting them know which of their articles I've read. I was going to include a comment about the articles I had read and ask them some question about something I'm unsure about or how their article might be in conflict with some other research.

If/when I get a response I was planning to follow up by asking to see any unpublished articles if they are working on something that also fits with my interest.

Firstly, I was wondering if anyone involved in academia has any thoughts about communicating with professors during the application process.

Also, is there some maximum number of emails that should be exchanged and at some point I would begin to annoy them, or it's ok to email back and forth for a couple of months?

Is there some number of emails I should exchange before I tell them explicitly that I am applying to their school and explicitly ask them for any help they can provide in the admissions process?

What about arranging a time to speak to them on the phone? Also good?

And finally, anything in my emails that I should be sure not to mention/include, or anything I should be sure to tell them?

[I'm focusing on email communication because, alas, I am out of the country and not able to make any more campus visits.]

Dear Professor, your class is kicking my ass

showbiz_liz — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:17:52 -0800

Should I tell my professor why I'm dropping his class, or just not say anything? I'm doing summer school at my university. It's a five-week period where you can take one or two classes at an accelerated pace. I'm taking two classes, but I think I'm about to drop one of them, newswriting. I need it for my major, but this particular class is kicking my ass, for a variety of reasons.

The pace is killing me- it's three times faster than normal. It's also online, and so all of the instruction is through reading and not lecturing, and I don't learn as well that way. I also found out that this particular professor grades much more harshly than many other professors who teach the class.

I plan to drop it and take it next semester, and I want to know if I should bother sending the professor an email with the first two reasons (pace and the fact that it's online).

Pros: It's a small department; if I have the professor again, he might remember me, and sending the email could make me look like less of a flake. He's also been very helpful to me so far in the class (although not so helpful that I want to keep taking it), and I feel like it might be rude to drop off the radar with no explanation.

Cons: He might not remember me dropping the class at all if I don't send an email, but if I do send one, he's more likely to. And he might interpret my explanations as bullshit and remember me as "girl who made up dumb excuses because she couldn't hack it." Do I really want to make this incident stick out in his mind if I don't need to?

It probably isn't a huge deal either way, but I'd like to know what the protocol is here.

How to make the best impression on graduate advisors in earth sciences?

cortisol — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:24:50 -0800

Help me compose the perfect letter of introduction and get over my fear of contacting potential Ph.D. advisors. I've read previous AskMes on related topics, but I didn't feel like they answered all my questions. Also, the best approach to take seems to vary by field, so many of them don't necessarily apply to the physical sciences.

I'm currently in the process of applying to graduate school, having been inspired by the International Polar Year to investigate the possibilities of geophysics and polar modeling. All the schools, books, AskMe threads, and so forth strongly suggest contacting professors whose research interests me. However, I'm having a great deal of difficulty composing the requisite emails. I've always been anxious about initiating interactions with other people, and the stakes in this case seem paralyzingly high. I feel like one sufficiently-dumb question about their research could sink my application, and I don't know how to ensure that I've read enough of their work to get it right (particularly since I don't have easy access to the full text of publications behind pay walls.) Most of the professors' personal "what I'm working on" websites are either nonexistent or 2-5 years out of date.

How can I evaluate the strength of my introduction emails? Is there a good rule of thumb for asking intelligent (or even intelligent-sounding) questions about a fairly technical research paper? Will I look unprepared if that question happens to have been answered in another published paper that I haven't found, or haven't read because it's behind a pay wall? Should I explicitly say "I would like you to consider me as a potential advisee" or just discuss their research? Will they be annoyed if I ask for advice on writing a letter of intent?

I guess it all boils down to: how can I calm down and reassure myself that pressing "send" isn't a potential death sentence for my application?

Unofficially auditing university classes?

jayder — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:03:20 -0800

Is it weird to ask a university professor if you can audit his/her class without officially enrolling in the university as an auditor ... and, as part of the arrangement, asking the professor if you can submit papers and have them graded and evaluated? Asking for a friend:

"I think I mentioned to you that I was going to look into taking a [graduate liberal arts] class at [Prestigious State University] this fall. [Prestigious State] has a program where people who aren't full-time students can enroll in a class, with the instructor's permission, and you even get credit and a real-life grade for it (whether the [graduate liberal arts] department would later count that credit towards a degree is an open question, I think, but that's not the main point here). I've looked into this, and the snag is that if I do this right now I'd have to pay tuition for the class at the out of state rate, which is very expensive for one class. I don't qualify for in-state tuition until I've lived in this state at least 12 months. So, I wondered what you thought about the following: I've considered e-mailing the professor in the class I'm interested in taking and asking if he would allow me to "audit" the class, i.e., take it for no credit, and without being assigned a grade, and essentially no record that I had ever officially taken the class. Of course there's no way to know how a given professor would react to this, but I wonder if you know anyone who's ever done this, or if you think this idea sounds completely crazy or a professor might take offense at it? The problem with it is that I sort of am asking the professor to work "for free", because I would want to do the assignments and have the prof evaluate them, even if I don't get an official grade. On the other hand, the presence or absence of my tuition being paid into the system is not going to make a difference in the professor's pay rate. But it still seems a little like asking for charity when the prof will probably wonder why I don't just wait twelve months. (I'm not sure it would be appropriate to tell the prof I want to get into grad school one of these days and I'm not getting any younger, damn it). So, what do you think about this idea?"

How do I get back in touch with old professors?

Ash3000 — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 08:42:20 -0800

How do I get back in touch with old professors? I transferred after my first year of college to an entirely different University, and am currently halfway through my junior year. It struck me recently that despite having had several wonderful professors, I haven't substantially kept in touch with any of them. This includes those who either taught(teach?) at the former school, were once at my current institution, or still actively teach where I am. Is it possible to create a friendship with some of these people? I've considered a few e-mail tactics (e.g. So, I've been reading into this topic...what books would you recommend?), but on the whole am unsure. One or two are folks who in the office hours I did attend got a sense of as people who'd be great to have in my life, even if only as an acquaintance - how to go about this?