<p>How formal are you in your dealings with your college professors and other instructores? Generally, I try to be very polite, addressing them as "Dr." or "Professor" unless instructed otherwise, always acknowledging and thanking them for the use of their time when asking a question (in person or via email), and generally just trying to be as polite and unobstrusive as possible. I figure they've spent a lot of years of school and scholarship to get where they are and thus deserve my respect, and I really don't want to come across as a jerk to the person evaluating my work. Lately, though, I've been noticing exceptions to this rule. For example, when talking to the TA in my research supervisor's lab, we always refer to the supervisor by his first name, just as a matter of course, as we both obviously respect him. Also, I recently emailed an instructor and was basically told I was being too polite!</p>
<p>My email was something like:</p>
<p>"Name,
I realize you are probably very busy and so I apologize for bothering you, but... [insert question here]... Once again, thank you for your time, and I'm sorry for bugging you!</p>
<p>Sincerely,
MyName"</p>
<p>The professor wrote me back and said they were glad to hear from me, but that I "simply have to (emphasis in the original) stop apologizing for emailing" them. I would have never thought I would be told to be less polite!</p>
<p>What have been your experiences with formality with professors?</p>
<p>I think your email was just too extreme. You don't need the "I know you're busy" stuff in the email. Just write a formal email with;</p>
<p>Professor,</p>
<p>Introduce yourself (name, student in your class)
State your question
Say thanks</p>
<p>-<your name=""></your></p>
<p>Keep it short, to the point. He probably didn't want to read all that extra, unneeded stuff.</p>
<p>One of my profs didn't like being called "professor" or "Dr.," and instead suggested that we call him by his first name, or if we felt uncomfortable with that, "Mr."</p>
<p>I still call him "Dr." in emails though.</p>
<p>Yeah, I had one Dr-to-be who said we should just call him by his first name. I couldn't do it. It just feels wrong, disrespectful to call a teacher anything short of Dr or Mr/Ms X. I find that I really don't address professrs as anything when speaking to them face-to-face. Most of the time, Drs. want to be called Dr. X, but if they are not yet a Dr, then they'll say so. Then you can call them Mr./Ms. X.</p>
<p>And it doesn't sound like the prof was telling you to be less polite. He/she was saying that you shouldn't apologize for asking for help and that it's no trouble to e-mail you back. You shouldn't be putting yourself down like that, thinking that it's a horrible inconvienience to ask a professor to answer your question. It's part of the job description that college teacher make themselves available to answer questions via e-mail. If you feel bad e-mailing, how do you manage to go to office hours? GatorEng's e-mail format is good; make them short and sweet.</p>
<p>I guess I should have specified that in this situation I was asking for a favor after class had ended, and the professor no longer had any official obligation to me, so I felt apologeitic. In normal cases, I do use a format similar to Gator's. It's was just a tad odd to be told to be LESS polite!</p>
<p>It sounds to me like you were both just being polite...the professor was saying basically "no problem"; he wasn't bothered!</p>
<p>There's a difference between polite and servile, and you crossed it. Formality is a good thing, constant apologizing is annoying. Take the email at face value and don't stop being polite, but do stop apologizing just for asking!</p>
<p>We call all our teachers by their first names, this seems to shock everyone at other schools. I suppose if we had teachers in my dept that were Dr.'s we would address them as such, but since none of them have PhD's we use first names. My mom has a PhD so whenever I call her at work, it's odd calling her Dr. when i ask to speak with her.</p>