My professor isn't replying to my emails. What do I do??

<p>young, I don’t know of any school where a prof’s email isn’t available on the website.</p>

<p>OK, here’s a crazy thought: if you e-mailed the professor during the semester to no avail, why didn’t you go to him/her at the end of a class session to talk to him/her? Why didn’t you go to his/her office?</p>

<p>Honestly, I call ******** on the whole story.</p>

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<p>If I or most people I know acted like that towards emails from others…especially clients, subcontractors, supervisors, or colleagues…we’d be out of a job in a New York minute. </p>

<p>It’s one thing if a student doesn’t get a response within a few days or even a week. It’s another if a Prof. feels it’s ok to get away with doing that for a month…not to mention an entire semester.</p>

<p>Only Prof I’ve had an issue with on this matter was the one teaching a summer course at an Ivy. This attitude would never fly at my LAC.</p>

<p>Also, OP did you check if you had the right e-mail? Did you talk to other students to see if they had the same problem? I seriously cannot believe you.</p>

<p>You haven’t mentioned whether you attend a large university or a small LAC. In my experience, there’s a huge difference in terms of whether a professor will respond to emails. Was this a large lecture-hall class, or small discussion group? Did you ever go to this professor’s office to discuss your issues in person?</p>

<p>Going to this professor to discuss the grade will most likely be unsuccessful. Can you “prove” why you think it should be higher?</p>

<p>It’s policy to give out email addresses, make yourself available. But, students tend to use email to replace direct contact. They tend to feel what works in their group of friends is good enough. (Look at how kids one-line each other on FB.) Their emails can be vague- “I want to talk with you about my grade.” It begs, ok, then come talk to me. The onus is on the kid to get to the prof.</p>

<p>DH does read them. With the exception of a few tremendously bright students, they usually lack content. With the exception of kids away from campus, he hesitates to let email replace face-time, for a host of reasons. </p>

<p>I agree that email is important in business- my contacts don’t have office hours, are not always located a few minutes walk away, and I have very little access to their daily schedules.</p>

<p>The OP certainly should have followed up with a phone call or visit long before this. But the prof shouldn’t have given the student his email address if he had no intention of replying. If, as lookingforward says, student emails are content-free or too vague, or the topic requires a personal meeting, then simple courtesy demands that the prof reply back with a “Please clarify” or “Come to my office to discuss this.” What does that take, 10 seconds? It’s unacceptable just to let repeated emails go into a black hole.</p>

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<p>Wait, you get too many emails to keep track of the important ones? But surely the most important emails you receive are not from your students, but from your superiors–are they required to notify you of major faculty meetings/search committee appointments via a handwritten note, too?</p>

<p>You sound like a teacher who holds students in contempt, and that’s not a good thing to be.</p>

<p>To the OP:</p>

<p>Get in touch with the department secretary, another professor, or the registrar. If your professor refuses to communicate with you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Just make it clear to whomever you’re emailing that your professor is not answering your emails.</p>

<p>Prof. Hollingway,</p>

<p>I missed last Friday’s exam. I need to reschedule. Next Wednesday and Thursday work for me.</p>

<p>Bill</p>

<p>Ghostt-- there is no reason to get nasty. You have no idea what kind of teacher I am.</p>

<p>Sometimes I use this device with a handset and a coily cable. It’s called… what’s it called… it’s like tele-… tele-something. It lets you speak to the person on the other end.</p>

<p>The other thing to consider is if a person gets a lot of email, they may also have an extremely selective spam filter; the OP’s messages may be ending up in a spam bin with the letters from wealthy Nigerian princes who are looking for American middle class people to donate money to. I also find a few hotel reservation confirmations in my spam folder yearly.</p>

<p>And, qialah: Extremely funny.</p>

<p>I think we should be careful not to project OP as our poor child, who tried in vain to contact a prof by email and was just so frustrated and now has an unfair grade. We know there are other options. </p>

<p>I think we should be careful not to assume contempt or dereliction of duties by the profs. The other side is that a student who doesn’t go to office hours, doesn’t stop in the dept office, isn’t fulfilling her options. I tend to get annoyed when kids use the easiest path, stop there and then get so woe-is-me.</p>

<p>One of mine did rely on email attempts and end up in OP’s situation. The other has an advisor who responds to her, even on weekends, usually within hours. (In fairness, this D asks specific questions in her email.) In both cases, I say to them, why not go to office hours, do the depth and breadth talk. Do some bonding.</p>

<p>I am a firm believer that profs know why certan kids sit in the back rows, so to speak. That’s a choice. Sorry. We didn’t have email when I was in college or grad school and we found ways to work with profs or avoid them.</p>

<p>But, I do agree a prof should make his/her office schedule clear and then be available.</p>

<p>Coily cable! I thought my house was the last one in the US with a phone with a coily cable thing! </p>

<p>We actually have 3 phones still on our landline…a kinda modern cordless thingy, the aforementioned 1970ish desk phone with coily thing and a wall mounted wooden railroad station phone with the bell ringers on top with a (gasp) rotary dial.
All this for a line that we use to receive robo calls from credit counseling companies and charity solicitations. I really have to disconnect this line as soon as I overcome my inertia.</p>

<p>Totally agree that student could use the phone in their pocket to set up a meeting with professor.</p>

<p>While I agree that the OP should have called or gone to office hours, I completely disagree that it is somehow OK for the prof to ignore emails. Emailing is a perfectly legitimate way to communicate and if the professor can’t handle emails, then IMO, he/she shouldn’t be a professor as his/her primarily responsibility should be to his/her students. If he/she can’t communicate fully over email, the VERY least he/she could do is say “I can’t answer this fully over email. Could we set up a time or have you visit my office hours? Thank you, Prof x” There. That took me all of 7 seconds.</p>

<p>“wooden railroad station phone with the bell ringers on top with a (gasp) rotary dial”</p>

<p>God, I wish I had one of those, musicmom. Our last rotary dial is in the garage. Gives the garage a comfortable nostalgic feel when the ringer goes off.</p>

<p>roma, two professors I know don’t even know how to use a calculator, and have their assistants do email because they do not trust computers.</p>

<p>PolarBear-
We love our phone that still rings. Will probably keep it up in the office as wall art even if we disconnect the line to it. We enjoyed watching our kids’ friends try to call home on it since even years ago the rotary dial was rare in our neighborhood.</p>

<p>The OP says that she has been emailing the prof all semester, but she can’t have had her final grade of C- much longer than a couple of weeks, as the semester just ended.</p>

<p>The prof is probably on vacation and will get back to the OP about the grade eventually.</p>

<p>Also, we’re not hearing the professor’s side of the story. Many students complain about not being able to “get in touch with” their professors, when what they really mean is that the professor told them something they didn’t want to hear or accept, and they won’t give up.</p>

<p>As faculty, I will not engage in email debates with students about grades. If a student wants a grade breakdown/explanation, I provide it–once. If I made an error, I change it. I’m not going to get into endless email back-and-forths with students about whether they deserved their grades. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. If the student does not accept my decision, the student can complain to the dean, where it usually ends.</p>

<p>The OP says she spoke to the prof about the e-mails, and the prof gave her his personal e-mail–and still didn’t respond.</p>

<p>Young people will often assume that authority figures will do what they say they will do. And sometimes they wait too long for this to happen. It takes some experience and maturity to know when you’ve waited long enough, and it’s time to elevate the issue. In this case, the OP now needs to get help from somebody else, like an academic adviser.</p>

<p>If you haven’t tried walking in to his office do that first (during office hours). To escalate w/o attending office hours would be putting the cart before th horse. </p>

<p>Before you attend office hours or if you do decide to seek help from your advisor be sure to have your work and the grading rubric and have your grade calculated out based on printed material and actual exams and papers and assignments if there were any. Is there a curve? If this is a garden variety econ lecture class, it is likely that there was a curve.</p>

<p>Also, the grade you earned and the grade you feel you “deserve” may be two different things. The prof in question is concerned with your work in this class only, not how this grade impacts your GPA and future plans as a whole. Be sure to keep the two separate both in your mind and in your communicatoin with the professor in question.</p>

<p>I like what Hunt has reminded us of. The point of this thread as I understand it, isn’t what grade the student deserves. It isn’t about arguing across email. It isn’t an answer that the student doesn’t like. According to the OP it is a consistent failure to respond to emails; despite the prof giving his/her personal email.</p>