You're probably guilty of it. You wake up before your first class on Monday morning tired and unmotivated to make the trek across campus. But you don't want to seem like a slacker, so you hop out of bed and write your professor an e-mail, a few lines about how you were sick all weekend and you just don't think you're going to be able to come to class today. You hope he or she understands. Jump back into bed, comforted by the knowledge that at least the professor won't think you just skipped out on class.
With e-mail becoming one of the most widely used methods of communication on college campuses, the student-professor relationship has changed, for better and for worse. On the plus side, students who don't feel comfortable speaking up in class can raise issues and ask questions from the comfort of their own rooms. On the other hand, some students flood the inboxes of their professors' accounts with questions, concerns, and excuses that border on the trivial.
For one English professor, who wished to remain anonymous, e-mail is a convenient way to get in touch with students, but is no substitute for face-to-face meetings.
"It's great for making appointments and getting in touch when a student has missed a class," she said. "It's much easier than using the office phone. I'm not always in my office, so I don't get phone messages all the time, but I always check my e-mail...The problem is when people try to substitute e-mails for office hours."
The professor said that e-mail is also useful for keeping in contact with students who are abroad. "In the past, I'd get a postcard or nothing," she said. "With e-mail, there's a lot more correspondence and I get to hear about how my students are doing."
It's also helpful, she said, in reminding advisees of important deadlines and developing a relationship with her first-year advisees.
"With freshman advisees, there tends to be a lot of anxiety-type e-mails, but that's understandable. It's probably really good for them, so they have someone to talk to," she said.
But she doesn't feel like e-mail has had a huge impact in terms of altering the student-professor relationship.
"I don't know that it's really made a difference in the relationship. It's certainly made it easier to get in touch and I tend to get less phone calls at home now," the professor, who has been teaching at Tufts for 14 years, said. "It hasn't made me feel much closer to my students, but it also hasn't distanced us at all. I still encourage students to set up a time to come in and talk."
And as for students who e-mail her to let her know that they're sick and won't be in class? "I e-mail them back and tell them to get well soon - I don't really have a problem with that. It's usually people just being overly conscientious," she said. "They feel guilty for not being in class and want the professor to know that they're not just blowing it off."
She said that her inbox becomes overwhelming around the time papers are due. As far as she's concerned, the heavier e-mail traffic around that time is mostly due to anxious students who run into problems or concerns in the middle of writing a paper.
"You get a number of questions that are anxiety questions, like 'should I staple or fold my paper?' Things that they'd never ask in person, but they're anxious and need reassurance, I suppose. But before e-mail, people would never think to call and ask whether they should staple or fold their paper," she said.
For the most part, however, the e-mails that she receives at the last minute aren't trivial matters - on the contrary, they tend to be more complicated questions that she doesn't feel comfortable answering via e-mail.
"Sometimes I can answer questions concerning paper topics, especially if I think it's a good paper topic. But for the most part, the student needs to come into my office hours and have the back and forth of a discussion," she said. "There's only so much you can say in an e-mail without a response, and you don't want to send an entire paper back to the person."
Overall, the professor says she is not over-burdened with students' e-mail, and added that she is "obsessed" with answering every e-mail she receives, regardless of how trivial the matter may seem.
"Sometimes I groan a little when I read my e-mail, but I'd rather have students feel free to e-mail me than not - then you run the risk of students not getting their questions answered because they feel intimidated," she said. "I wouldn't consider myself inundated - most students are reasonable."
She added that sometimes students just don't think before they click.
"It's the problem with all e-mail - you hit "send" and then you think 'maybe I shouldn't have sent that...'" she said. "You tend to think about it more before you call."
Generally, senior Tory Foster says she would prefer meeting with professors in person, but admits that e-mail was a big help while she was abroad last year. "I don't think I would have been able to do a thesis this year if I hadn't been able to get the information and contact the professors through e-mail," she said.
Now that she's back on the Hill, however, she rarely e-mails her professors. "I like the idea of talking to a professor face to face because it shows that you care enough to come in, rather than just typing up an e-mail," Foster said. "If it's a really basic thing, like I lost my syllabus and need to know what the assignment was, I'll e-mail them, but if it's anything at all substantial, I'd rather meet with them in person."
In her three and a half years at Tufts, Foster has yet to call a professor with a concern.
"I would never call a professor - it feels like that would be like crossing a line," she said. "[E-mail] is a really comforting option to have."
Foster thinks that e-mail has brought students and professors closer together in some respects, but in other ways, it has prevented some students from meeting with their professors in person. "It's a double-edged sword," she said.
As a graduate student in the English department, Christopher Craig has a different relationship with students. Whether it's in the English I and II classes he teaches, or in the upper-level classes that he TAs, Craig interacts with the undergraduate population on a daily basis. And much of that communication is via e-mail.
"I have much less contact with the students for whom I TA than I do with the students for whom I fill the role of instructor," Craig said. "If I had to make a comparison, I would say that the students for whom I TA tend to send me more e-mails about topics that they would rather not bring up with the professor, such as paper extensions and things like that, than my own students."
And while Craig appreciates the convenience that e-mail lends to communication, he admits that it does have problems.
"Certainly, e-mail has made communication more convenient between my students and me. In that respect, I think that it has been helpful... but I don't think that it's the most effective," Craig said. "I can answer a student's question about a reading or whatever, but unless I hear back from her immediately - which usually isn't the case - I'm never quite sure whether my explanation has satisfied the student's inquiry or not. I prefer to conference with students as often as possible."
