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Professors are some of busiest people around.
Introduce yourself during the first week of school.
Let your professor know about your interests, your questions, or something else unique to you.
The better impression you leave, the better they can remember you.
That helps them put your email into context.
And perhaps they’ll already trust that you’re a serious student.
Based on subject line alone, they may delete mail that looks spammy or simply unimportant to them.
Now, professors are obligated to respond to student email for administrative and class-related matters.
But the subject line is still important for getting through to your professor fast.
So before sending your email narrow it down to its specific purpose.
State that purpose as directly as it’s possible for you to in the subject line.
A very specific headline lets them know in a glance what’s expected of them.
You don’t want to say “Hey” and then go on with your message.
That sets an unprofessional tone that can be a barrier to effective communication.
You want to err on the side of courtesy.
Your instructor is not technically a professor, but has just started teaching part-time this year.
check that to have labels, numbers, dates and times correct.
This turns a potentially quick response to a conversation that spans across multiple emails.
Because you’ll learn to get the point in professional way, and that builds confidence.
Ideally, you don’t want more than three to four sentences in a paragraph.
And you don’t want to stuff one message with too many paragraphs.
You do so by making your request direct.
It may be clearer if you phrase the request as a question.
Or if you use the opener of “like… [request here].”
Make your request so clear that your professor won’t have questions about what you ask of them.
Apply the sample principles listed above to your follow-up email.
Or it may be time to talk to your professor in person.
If that’s the case, double-check you find out from them how to best communicate via email.
Effectively communicating with your professor as needed greatly improves your chances for succeeding in a particular class.
