Timeline for Asking a faculty member at my university that I have not met(!) about his research, and about courses that deal with his specialty/my career goal?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 10, 2021 at 3:26 | answer | added | Mark Foskey | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 17:49 | comment | added | WoJ | It always surprises me how faculty members are seen by some people as some kind of demi-gods. They are faculty members, they work for research and teaching so I do not see why someone would not ask them questions - or apologize for taking their precious time. If they are good people they will answer. If they are busy they will answer or not. If they are assholes, they will not answer. They (I used to be one) are just normal people. When I was a student I would always ask everyone around. When I was a faculty member I would get asked and depending on the circumstances, be able to answer or not. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 16:35 | comment | added | Eric Duminil | @NomadMaker: Due to the Dunning-Kruger effect, many brilliant people might feel the need to apologize for the things they still don't know, while ignoramuses won't even care and write e-mails full of confidence. You're free to read the emails you want. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 16:12 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @AzorAhai-him-: In fact, I wasn't too sure what exactly is a "faculty member", so I googled - Wikipedia seems to assume it is a synonym of "academic personnel", Other resources provide equally vague/wide definitions. Now, if I attempt to translate this to German, I'll invariably end up with a term that includes PhD students, who are considered rather "employees of the university" than "students" here in my experience. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 15:33 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @O.R.Mapper I do not know of any definitions of faculty that include PhD students. But, as we know, academia varies a lot. If you have an example of a locale where they're considered faculty, I'd love to hear it. OP seems new to be new to academia so I was letting them know | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 15:20 | answer | added | user3067860 | timeline score: 2 | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 15:13 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @AzorAhai-him-: From what I can see, "faculty member" is quite a vaguely defined term that, depending on definition, may encompass all employees (related to research/teaching) of a university. And the way I understand the question, the OP's concern is centered on the situation of "a student contacting a university employee without having had any prior contact to them", rather than contacting a specific kind of university employee in particular. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 14:54 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @o.r. In which systems are they faculty? | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 14:51 | answer | added | Xerxes | timeline score: 1 | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 14:49 | comment | added | user3067860 | @NomadMaker ...I'm kidding, I hate groveling, but truly the people who have absolute confidence are even worse than those who have no confidence at all. I've never had a proselytizer ever apologize for wasting my time and I've never seen a crank/crack-pot have the thought that maybe, just maybe, they might not have the most important discovery since knocking flint against steel. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 14:49 | comment | added | user3067860 | @NomadMaker Personally I immediately ignore anyone who doesn't approach me with the correct amount of groveling and apology. Anyone who assumes that what they have to say is worth my time is obviously over-inflating their own importance and thus clearly an unfit judge of how important something is. Someone who recognizes that they are unworthy of even being in my presence is at least likely to keep it to the absolute minimum necessary and only present the truly important things. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 6:59 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @AzorAhai-him-: That depends on the country/on the way the university is organized. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 3:52 | comment | added | NomadMaker | You claim that people who apologize for writing to me are as worth listening to as anyone else. I haven't found it that way. Should I listen to people who knock on my door trying to convert me to a religion or political view that I have no interest in? I put the people who think that their own words are worthless in that category. Some of them might be worth listening to, but I'd rather not bother to find out. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 3:51 | answer | added | Cole | timeline score: 9 | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 3:48 | comment | added | Zach Lipton | @NomadMaker Perhaps it might be worth reflecting on whether a process that involves deliberately ignoring everybody who contacts you without a requisite amount of confidence and boldness could be outright discriminatory? I am thinking in particular of differences in communication styles that are often socialized through cultural and gender differences. Some people are taught from an early age to apologize frequently, and that manifests in their writing; they're just as worth listening to as anyone else. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 3:04 | comment | added | NomadMaker | Because I choose to believe that people who constantly apologize for bothering me are telling the truth, and have nothing meaningful to communicate. I fully admit that I might be wrong. I was exaggerating: I don't throw the note away, but put it in a special folder so that I can defend my decision if I ignored somebody my boss would have preferred I listen to. | |
| Feb 9, 2021 at 0:54 | comment | added | dothyphendot | @NomadMaker Why? Did you only want to correspond with a certain kind of person? | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 22:27 | review | Close votes | |||
| Feb 16, 2021 at 22:24 | |||||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 22:14 | comment | added | NomadMaker | I was a staff member at a US university for 20 years. Anytime I got an email that apologized for writing it, I tossed in the trash without reading any further. | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 22:10 | comment | added | Anonymous Physicist | Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor? | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 22:05 | answer | added | dothyphendot | timeline score: 3 | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 21:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAcademia/status/1358883339218939904 | ||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 19:33 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 19:01 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | FYI, PhD students are not faculty | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 12:00 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | ||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:58 | history | edited | astronat supports the strike |
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| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:58 | answer | added | astronat supports the strike | timeline score: 39 | |
| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:48 | history | edited | user134938 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:39 | history | edited | user134938 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:34 | review | First posts | |||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:37 | |||||
| Feb 8, 2021 at 11:27 | history | asked | user134938 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |