"How to Email Your Professor (without being annoying AF)" (Medium.com) by former professor turned academic writing consultant Laura Portwood-Stacer provides an easy step-by-step guide for students on professional email writing. I like this piece because it not only gives a template for communicating professionally, but explains why crafting an email to your prof (or later, professional colleagues or clients) in this way matters.
For first year students especially, coming to university can be a huge culture shock as they learn the norms, expectations, and etiquette of a new institutional culture. On top of this, many instructors often assume skills and knowledge that students may not have been taught. While our millennial students may be 'digital natives', this doesn't mean that they innately know how we expect them to interact through digital media, such as the etiquette of emailing your university professor.
Instructors may wish to include a link to this in their course websites or digital syllabi. Alternatively, I could see this article being incorporated into a lecture on culture shock that uses the first-year at university experience as an example for students to think reflexively about this anthropological concept in their own lives.
