<p>I've started getting contacted about interviews and have two questions. </p>
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<li><p>How can I ask for an interviewer's address to send a thank you note? It seems like a bit of an awkward question to ask them, but handwritten thank you cards appear to be better than emails. If it's possible, is using the phone book creepy? I mean, it's an obvious resource, but I don't want to seem like a stalker. </p></li>
<li><p>If an interviewer is a professor, should I address them as Ms./Mr. or should I use "Professor" as a title? I'm not familiar with what would be more respectable and can't find any references about it anywhere.</p></li>
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<li><p>I agree that in general a hand-written note is preferable to an email, I wouldn’t push for more contact information than the interviewer volunteers. When I have interviewed in the past, I have given my business card to applicants and invited them to contact me if they had questions. But if I hadn’t done that, I certainly wouldn’t have faulted an applicant who had only my email address for emailing me.</p></li>
<li><p>When I know a person has a title that is some rank of professor, I usually address him or her that way if I’m being formal. You can use “Professor” as a stand-alone honorific (as you might say “Doctor,” “Senator” or “Colonel”), but it’s more common to address a person using “professor” and his or her last name (as in, “Professor Sikorsky”).</p></li>
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<p>That having been said, there are colleges and universities where the prevailing practice is otherwise. For example, I went to graduate school at the University of Virginia, where students addressed professors simply as “Mr.” or “Ms.” </p>
<p>But no professor I have ever known would take it badly if you addressed him or her as “Prof. [last name].”</p>
<p>One obscure, little thing to be careful of, depending on where you are (if you are in the south), is if the professor is a woman and has her PhD, to use ‘Dr.’ or ‘Professor’ instead of ‘Ms.’. I don’t think an alumni interviewer would hold it against you majorly, but there are certain types of people in the south who use ‘Ms.’ even if the professor has a doctorate, and the professors I’ve come to know are certainly sensitive to that fact.</p>
<p>Sorry, didn’t know where the OP was from (or you, Sikorsky). And I’m a Texas southerner, so I’m a little less old south (that’s what I think Charlottesville is, actually-- I’m still thinking iced tea and porches) and a little more-- I don’t know, cowboy south? (Though I don’t own a pair of cowboy boots and I last rode a horse when I was twelve).</p>
<p>I missed the first question, but I would say, if you don’t get a business card and don’t have a clue as to address, an email would be appropriate. For some of my interviewers who have very visible google profiles (ie, name is listed first or second on a google search to their place of business, so I hope I don’t come across as stalker-y), I have actually sent thank you cards to their offices. These were all professionals (or faculty) where their address was listed on a public, high-profile website, so that’s what I went with.</p>
<p>Purpleacorn, after re-reading your post, I think you and I may have been talking about something different. </p>
<p>Were you suggesting that some people where you live would address a man as “Doctor” or " Professor," but a woman as “Ms.”? That would be positively Victorian–if not Medieval! That’s not what we did at U.Va. At U.Va., everybody on the faculty was “Mr.” or “Ms.,” and nobody was called by any other honorific. (Well…except in the medical school. Faculty there were called “Dr. [last name].” )</p>
<p>Not that this has any bearing on my original advice to the OP.</p>
<p>Sikorsky, yes, actually. It has to do with a lot of people (especially in my part of the boondocks) not believing first/not considering that the female professors who are teaching them have PhDs. Apparently, it can be a problem in the south. In that case, talking with a few female professors, it is something that they are acutely aware of and note, especially if it is a teenager (male, typically) who refers to them as Ms./Miss/Mrs. Last Name instead of Dr. Last Name.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of schools where the honorific is not that important (LAC schools, more selective/intellectual schools)-- unfortunately, where I currently am is not that kind of place.</p>
<p>Even here in my blue-state suburb of a major East Coast city, my physician-wife has encountered that problem. When she was a resident calling families from the Emergency Room, she’d identify herself as “Dr. Sikorsky,” and then at the end of the call, people would say to her, “Thanks, Ms. Sikorsky.”</p>
<p>She has the same problem in meetings now in the government agency that she works for. In a meeting where men with doctoral degrees in statistics or pharmacy or medicine or chemistry are all called “Doctor,” people from outside the agency sometimes call her “Ms. Sikorsky.”</p>
<p>She’s really not uptight about her title. She would much rather that the neighborhood kids call her Mrs. Sikorsky, as opposed to Dr. Sikorsky. But when it happens in a clinical or professional setting, it really does get under her skin.</p>
<p>That sounds exactly like what I’ve learned. The English professors I know/have talked about this with could all care less what you call them outside of the classroom (in fact, a few actively encourage students to use their first names after the first class is over), but inside of the classroom, it’s Dr. [Last Name]. The name thing (and the casual lack of respect it implies) is probably more a problem among general education courses (who don’t particularly want to be taking their three required English courses and want to get out as soon as humanly possible) than it is with the majors, who commonly refer to most of the younger professors by their first names around the department.</p>