<p>So I had a slightly weird exchange with a professor whose class I am trying to get into for the next quarter. </p>
<p>I emailed her asking for permission to be in the class (since it is full). While looking for her email I stumbled across her bio page on the University website. Her picture was taken with a photobooth webcam and had one of those "pop art" filters on it so you couldn't even see what she looked like apart from the top of her head and some stylized glasses. Going from this, and after reading her bio I got the impression that she is still fairly young. </p>
<p>Anywho, I addressed the email as Mrs instead of Dr. </p>
<p>She emailed me back saying something like "Dan: despite the fact that you A) Address me as Mrs and not Dr. And B) You made at least one grammatical mistake in your email body, sure!"</p>
<p>I sat there thoroughly embarrassed for a minute, then started thinking how i've been trained to call my professors by their first names or nicknames. I've been in college for almost 2 years now and almost ALL of my teachers, regardless of their doctoral status, had made it clear that we call them by their first names. </p>
<p>I thought it was rather rude of her to be so defensive about it. A simple, "please address me as doctor" would have been efficient. Also, i'm 99% sure SHE made a grammatical error in her email. She said "address" likes it's present tense instead of "addressed" like it should be in context with the rest of the sentence. I'm not going to say anything about that though.</p>
<p>Anyone else have awkward professor moments?</p>
<p>I don’t think you should take this as being awkward. From what I could gather about her (photobooth webcam [with] one of those “pop art” filters on it so you couldn’t even see what she looked like apart from the top of her head and some stylized glasses), it seems like her response was tinged with a little bit of light-hearted humor :)</p>
<p>HS Senior here. Starting college this fall! :D</p>
<p>Eh I ran into my old calc professor last semester and said “Hey Mr. X, how are you?” and felt dumb lol. He didn’t mind though, he had us on a first name basis with him for cryin out loud.</p>
<p>Little bit of trivia: I know several female professor who feel that they get less respect from their students than their male colleagues because of their gender. One of their pieces of evidence: students seem to address them by first name or “Mrs” by default, when their male colleagues are addressed with Professor or Doctor by default. </p>
<p>Your professor might carry similar resentments. </p>
<p>Seriously, why in the world would you look at your professor’s picture to decide on the appropriate salutation?</p>
I find it interesting how much the conventions vary. I was taught (by a faculty member) that “Prof.” is a higher title than “Dr.” and that some senior faculty would take offense if we addressed them as “Dr. X.”</p>
<p>I’d be mildly annoyed and think she was being a little rude, but it’s not a big deal. Some professors get really weird when you don’t call them “Dr.” I feel as though I wouldn’t care if I were them, but whatever.</p>
<p>People who get doctorates in anything work very hard and take offense when you don’t address them properly, especially if they are in academia. Professor is considered higher than Dr. because you need a doctorate to become a professor (and even then, there are many levels of being a professor). I address everyone as “professor” and subsequently “sir” or “ma’am” in the same conversation.</p>
<p>It seems like a fair number of women prefer not to be called Mrs., even if they don’t have a PhD. I would always just use “Professor”. You can’t go wrong with that.</p>
<p>Her picture (on her bio page) just gave me an impression of her that I went off of. Plain and simple. </p>
<p>I really don’t know her so I have no idea whether she was joking around or not.</p>
<p>Of course I would never respond telling her she had a grammatical error in her email, but if she is going to nitpick on mine then hers should be perfect as well.</p>
<p>I really, really think she was joking around. I’d be far more irritated if she said “please address me as doctor” rather than what she said. That sounds cold and the message that you posted sounded up-beat.</p>
<p>TCBH- This is true. You’re right in that you can’t go wrong with professor. Even if they’re not a professor (such as a TA), they’ll correct you. Better to go too “high” on the respect scale than too “low”.</p>
<p>Op-
You haven’t been trained to call your profs by their first name you were given permission by them to call them by their first name.
You cannot assume all professors like to be addressed in a familiar manner since you state you don’t really know her.
Err on the side of respect.</p>
<p>Why would you assume someone’s marital status anyway, especially on the basis of them having a child? Get over it, and if you wanted to take the class, take the class. And use this as a learning experiment: in the future, try not to make assumptions, and address people as Dr. or Professor until they tell you you can call them something else. Nobody gets offended if you accidentally call them “Dr.” if they are not.</p>
<p>Also, Professor is not necessarily higher than “Dr.” You don’t always need a PhD to be a professor, as someone stated earlier (depends on the field and the school - some schools may hire MA holders as professors, and in the fine arts an MFA is the terminal degree). It depends on the school. Just use local convention until someone says “Hey, call me Amy.”</p>