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Email etiquette

11/20/2014

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Often, the emails I receive and the emails I write seem like they come from different planets, like aliens got hold of my email address.

Clearly, it’s a generational shift. Today’s undergraduate and most graduate students grew up in the cell phone era, where texts are a common way to communicate. Abbreviations, dropped greetings and signatures, and informality are the norm in texts.

I grew up not only before texts, but before email. I got my first email account in grad school in 1992, and at first, I could only access it through a system that was completely command driven and clunky, and eventually, from my apartment with dial up service, before web browsers were common. The common forms of communication in not only my childhood, but my college and early work experiences were in person, phone, and written letters/memos. That’s right, when I wanted to ask a professor something, I went to office hours or left a note. When I communicated with co-workers or my adviser, we wrote each other memos.


The reason this background matters is that, if you are emailing with someone my age or older, or even a bit younger, you need to be aware that we expect emails to be closer to memos or letters than to texts. Specifically:

  • Use a greeting. If it’s a formal message, “Dear Dr. Garcia.” If it’s less formal, “Hi Jenna” or even “Jenna” is probably fine. But do include a greeting (as an aside, my husband recently asked me how our babysitter spelled her name, and I asked “Why, are you putting her in your contacts?” and he said, “No, I’m texting her.” See, my generation often puts greetings in texts).
  • Sign all of your emails. I have a signature at the end of mine but it’s hard for me not to sign it, even when the recipient is someone whom I know would never sign one back. So perhaps if I write 100 emails a day and typing my first name takes 1 second, I am wasting 10 hours a year typing my name (Yes, I had to take a break from typing this post to tell my husband this crazy statistic. Maybe I need to rethink typing my name). Many people you write to, though, will expect to see a signature, and will be put off if it’s missing.
  • You can set up an automatic signature that includes information about who you are, your address, other contact information, and any website or professional social media you want to share. I find it really useful when people do so because I can skim the email but this information about position and location is in one place. My husband pointed out tonight that I could add “Eva” at the top of my automatic signature and perhaps save myself 10 hours per year. You can try it and be smarter than I am. If you put a quote or an image in your signature, be thoughtful about how important that quote is, whether it could offend anyone, etc.
  • Use your work email account for professional emails. If you’re writing to someone at your institution, it shows that you are using the same system and decreases the likelihood of it going to their spam. If you are writing to someone elsewhere, it provides legitimacy. If you prefer something a non-work email, you can funnel your emails through Gmail, receive all of your emails in Gmail, and make your return address from Gmail be your work email. 
  • Minimize exclamation marks! I’ve heard two opinions on this point: never use them, or use exclamation marks as though you only have 3 to use your entire life. The general thinking behind both perspectives is that exclamation marks appear unprofessional, casual, or young. I confess that I sometimes use exclamation marks as a shortcut on a point – e.g., ”Thanks!” instead of “Thanks so much that was an enormous help.” Or I will use an exclamation mark with positive feedback to balance out any criticism in an email, say, for instance, in feedback to a student on a paper or manuscript. But I try not to use more than 1 (okay, maybe 2) in an email, and most of my emails have none.
  • Reply to emails promptly. If your adviser asks you to do a huge task that might take you 2 weeks, still reply within 24 hours to acknowledge receipt of the email, that you’re working on it, and that you think you can have it done within 2 weeks. This issue is another generational difference I’ve noticed. A lot of times students don’t respond to emails, whether it’s when I ask them to work on something (as mentioned above); send them information they requested (a quick “thanks” email will do); give them feedback on a paper or thesis… Acknowledging someone’s email shows them that you appreciate the time that she spent writing that email, and also saves her time because she doesn’t have to follow up with a “did you get my message?” email. 
  • Finally, something that can be very helpful is to follow up meetings with an email summarizing the key points. For instance, if you meet with your adviser about changes he suggested on your thesis, a quick email summarizing the main points can avoid your missing or misinterpreting something that he asked you to do.  Similarly, after a meeting of 4 people in which tasks on a manuscript are divvied up, one person can summarize those next steps in an email. This strategy is also quite useful for students after committee meetings, such as after a dissertation proposal or defense. Sending a quick email around summarizing the key points made can again confirm you didn’t miss anything, and can create a shared document so that if someone 3 months later claims that she asked you to make a change you don’t remember, you have a document that she didn’t object to from a prior meeting.

All of these strategies will help you cross potential generational communication barriers, and will make you a better communicator in general – until the next generation dominates faculty positions, and then who knows! what! will happen!  

“The post Email etiquette first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 20, 2014.”

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How to address others

11/16/2014

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For the longest time I awkwardly avoided addressing my mother-in-law because I wasn’t sure what to call her. Calling her by her first name seemed too informal. Calling her Mrs. seemed silly. Calling her “Mom” seemed too familiar (and, uh, not true). So I would avoid in person or written greetings and try to segue into conversations and messages without them (and that goes against my own recent advice).

I sometimes notice students acting similarly in trying to figure out how to address faculty. So here is some general advice for addressing faculty, or unknown people who may or may not be faculty.

You can just about never go wrong erring on the side of formal and calling your instructor “Dr.” even though she may not have a doctorate. Has anyone without a PhD or MD ever been offended that you called her doctor? Does a grad student teaching a course mind if a student incorrectly addresses him as Dr.?  

Similarly, if you’re writing job applications and the name of the person you’re sending it to doesn’t have a degree on it, you can’t go wrong with “Dr.” You won’t offend an administrative assistant if you call him “Dr.” but you easily could offend a faculty member if you call him “Mr.”

Every department and every person has different norms for how students should address faculty. My department is pretty informal and most graduate students address us by first name. With undergraduates, my colleagues are pretty mixed, with some comfortable being called by first name, and others preferring to be called Dr. or Professor. That said, if you’re a new graduate student and you aren’t sure how to address your adviser, or if you’re taking a class with someone you don’t know well, the safe bet is to start addressing the instructor as “Dr.” and if he corrects you to use his first name, then feel free to do so.

In summary of this post that’s longer than it needs to be: Call everyone doctor unless you know for sure you shouldn’t.

“The post How to address others first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 20, 2014.”

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Don't delete

11/12/2014

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A simple tip, but one that can become super important.

Err on the side of keeping emails, documents, etc. Here are some examples:

  • Save emails. Most email systems now allow you to archive even without into a specific folder, so you don’t have to save them all in your inbox (a person very close to me whom I won’t name has over 2000 messages in his inbox and it stresses me out whenever I walk by his computer). You never know when you might need to pull up that email, whether it’s to show your adviser that he really did say 10:00 AM, not 11:00 AM, or to remind yourself what room that meeting is in, or to demonstrate to the student in your class that you did indeed tell her that the paper was due at 5:00 PM not midnight. Documentation of email correspondence is valuable.
  • Save most documents you write or receive. Even save older versions of them, rather than overwriting one version over and over. If I’m working on a document over a period of months, I don’t necessarily save a new version every day that I work on it, but I try to save a new version every month or so (so on my computer there will be 2014-09, 2014-10, 2014-11 versions). Just today a student and I were looking at a manuscript we’re working on and wanted to pull up an older version to see how we had described analyses before changing them, and we were lucky we had the older version. You never know when you might need that document, and trying to recover it from the trash is no fun.
  • Save syntax, always. This issue probably should be its own post, but for now, please believe me that you should never run analyses and then not save the syntax. If you use the windows driven commands (e.g., in SPSS) then at least paste them and save them. On the same paper we recently had an issue where we needed to check some analyses and the first author hadn’t saved syntax, which led to hours of trying to recreate what she did, rather than being able to pull up a file and run it in 5 minutes. Even if the paper that used that syntax is published, some day you may want to know how you computed that composite variable, or will want to run similar analyses in a different paper, and you will be so relieved that you have those syntax.        .
  • Save documents related to your courses (thanks Deb Temkin). In particular, save class papers because you may some day want to write a grant proposal or manuscript with similar ideas, and will want to return to your great conceptual explanation of that really relevant theory. Sometimes returning to old papers you wrote while immersed in a literature can be very helpful. Other times when you return to a paper 5 years later it's not as amazing as you thought, but if you don't have it, you will always remember it as amazing and lost. Also save all class syllabi. You may one day want to teach the same course, and knowing how someone else designed the course will be a great springboard. Also, I've had former students email me many years later asking for a syllabus because they need it for some licensing or accrediting program, and your life will be easier if you save it yourself, rather than relying on others to do so.
Unsure whether to save something or not? Then save it. 2015-you will be ever so grateful to 2014-you.

The post “Don’t delete first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 13, 2014.”

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Naming  your documents and other files

11/11/2014

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This semester I’m teaching our first year grad student orientation course, which has two goals: (1) expose students to research(ers) in our department with weekly presentations by HDFS faculty, and (2) early stage orientation to graduate school, careers, and professional development. My goal had been to post weekly about the topic covered in class, but we are approaching week 12 and so that clearly failed. But today I’m inspired for catch up.

I remember when I started my first job post-college and I asked my supervisor how to decide on names for my files. At that point, PCs were relatively new and the only files I had ever named were college papers and my resume and cover letters (this was 1990; I didn’t own a computer until I started grad school 2 years later). No one told me what to do, and it took me a few years to come up with a system I found satisfying.

File naming is important not only for your own sanity, but also for your professional interactions. But it seems like a very bland subject so I’ll be brief (for me). If you have a good file naming system, it will save you tons of time when you are trying to find documents, and also, will avoid annoying other people when they try to find documents you sent. Here are some key things to consider.

  • File naming works best if you have a good directory system. There isn’t one good solution, but generally broad categories with sub-categories makes finding things easier. One trick I have is that for many of my folders, I have a sub-folder called “old” so that when I’m scanning for something, I’m not distracted by documents I’m unlikely to use again (but don’t want to trash completely). And here's some advice on organizing teaching files from profhacker.
  • For file names, ask your adviser/supervisor if s/he has a preferred system. Sharing files will be easier if you use a similar system.
  • Think about the first word in your file name. If you sort alphabetically, but all of your file names start with “HDFS,” that will not be particularly helpful. Use a first word that you’re likely to scan for.
  • If you’re sharing files, avoid the dreaded non-descript title. The title “thesis draft” may be original on your computer, but on my computer, it could be confused with many theses from the past 2 decades.
  • I like shared files to have the following information:
                    Last name, content, date
                    For instance, Waterman thesis 2014-09-06 or
                    Waterman & Lefkowitz parenting style MS 2014-10-06
        That way I easily identify it by the title; I easily find it in a sort; and if I don’t and do a search, any keyword will help me locate it.
  • I like to use the following format for date names: YYYY-MM-DD. Then, if I sort, all files with the same title but different date appear in perfect chronological order. If I titled them the way Americans write dates, 10-06-2014 then they would sort poorly across years.
  • Finally, not a file name issue, but any document you share should include in the document 3 things: Your name, a title, and page #s. Your name and a title so that if it’s printed, someone will always know what it is, even in a pile of other things on his/her desk. And page #s so that if it’s printed: (1) if it gets out of order (I’m clumsy!) it’s easy to re-sort, and (2) if we’re discussing it or I’m emailing you about it, I can say, on p. 17, you wrote…

The post “Naming your documents & other files first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 11, 2014.”

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Publishing perseverance

11/9/2014

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Sometimes publishing takes a long time. Sometimes a paper you write doesn't hit the first, second, or even third place you submit it.  Sometimes, the only way you get a paper published (or a grant funded) is by perseverance and the inability to give up in the face of rejection.

Yes, it's time for another confession. It's one that I am finding hard to make as I sit here writing it (I keep pausing and asking myself, do you really want to put this out there?). But my own discomfort sharing it provides evidence that it's important for me to share this experience with graduate students and other young professionals. I heard this week that a paper that I wrote is now in print.  I could pretend that this paper is published in the journal I submitted it to, and that it was a straightforward and easy process, but it wasn't. It was first submitted 8 years ago, and it was rejected from 4 other journals before it was published in its current location.

There are a number of reasons that this happened. I aimed high on the first submission, and after a long review process, it was rejected, actually on the day my children were born. The intervening years include periods of time where I was busy with other projects, including data collection and new manuscripts and didn't return to this paper;  a 2 year period  where it went through three rounds of revision, at which point the editor asked for completely new analyses and new variables that were not central to the paper, so we withdrew it. Last fall, while on sabbatical, I had a chunk of time to rework it, and sent it to a new journal, where we had a very positive review process, an R&R,  an acceptance soon after, and then this week, it was published.

The reason I persevered is that I had faith in the paper. It wasn't the most life changing paper ever, but I thought it was strong and interesting. Obviously, if I didn't have faith in it, or if reviewers pointed out something fatal, I should have given up. But when we received reviews, we were able to address concerns, and send it somewhere new. In the end, the perseverance paid off. Sometimes, it's an issue of fit, and you eventually find the right home for a paper.

In my research group, we have a "paper tracking sheet" that we update 3 times per year. For paper that are in progress or submitted, we have information about when and where we intend to submit it, and journal names and dates of any prior submissions. Sometimes, we miss our target submission dates. Sometimes even by years. But once that paper is accepted, it moves to the "in press" section of the document, and the history disappears from the document.

Again, I'm not saying that every paper requires perseverance. Some papers find their homes on the first or second try. And honestly, on the reviewing  end, I've read manuscripts that probably should never be published anywhere, even with new frameworks or new analyses. But my point is, just like the late blooming adolescent, sometimes, for a number of reasons, a paper may take a bit longer to find its home, and in the end, that line on your CV doesn't mean anything different than any other line... at least to anyone but you and your co-authors.
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    Eva S. Lefkowitz

    I write about professional development issues (in HDFS and other areas), and occasionally sexuality research or other work-related topics. 

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