<p>So i’m doing this chemical engineering internship right now. I am a rising sophomore(just completed my freshman year). This is a message i just received from the professor i’m working with. Clearly, he’s not very impressed by my performance:</p>
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<p>As long as i dont ask him for a rec when applying for engineering jobs,grad school,law school,etc.- should i be worried about his impression of me getting to grad school/law school ad coms, employers,etc. ?</p>
<p>Is there any merit to what he’s saying?</p>
<p>It strikes me as odd that the professor would send such communication by email rather than speaking to you in person. Could this be a perverse joke played on you by someone else? Whether or not it is, you should speak to this professor and/or graduate student in charge of your work and see what you can do to salvage the summer. Perhaps they expect you to be more of a self-starter? Anyway, I think you must take some action at this point.</p>
<p>PS - I wouldn’t be LMAO if I were you</p>
<p>Congratulations. You give losers everywhere a target to try and not hit. You set the standard pretty low though. Good job - good performance just became that much more valuable. :)</p>
<p>Wow. I have to admit that’s kind of funny.</p>
<p>ICED.</p>
<p>Seriously, if you’re not making this up, that’s not good.</p>
<p>If this guy’s so cheesed off at your crappy work ethic that he’s writing you scathing e-mails telling you that you’re a total zero, then you need to suck it up and go talk to him right now, make sure it wasn’t a prank, apologize as you’ve never apologized before, and then proceed to work your ass off for whatever remains of your internship to prove him wrong.</p>
<p>Professors TALK to each other. If this guy’s going around telling everyone, “DON’T hire this kid,” then that’s at least going to make every other professor that he talks to highly skeptical about your qualifications and motivations as a student.</p>
<p>This could seriously screw you over, and you shouldn’t be laughing your ass off about it. You should be <em>working</em> your ass off to salvage your rep.</p>
<p>Seriously I may not know too much about internships in general but I do know the professors TALK A LOT to each other especially those in the same field. My dad is a professor of medicine and he always asks other professors before working with a student. If a professor really thinks you’re that bad you’re in trouble.</p>
<p>sorry for the delay guys…</p>
<p>Ok guys- this is the real deal. Its not a prank. He’s not very fluent in english. i spilled orange juice all over my key board when i read this message because i had NO idea that he felt this way about me. Its kinda like having a girlfriend for three+ years and thinking she’s attracted to you- Then one fine day she calls you and tells you 1)you’re ugly and 2)She should never have dated you.
Dont base your impressions of me on this email. There were extenuating circumstances- which don’t really matter anyway. It’s what he thinks of me now that is important, right?</p>
<p>So anyway, yeah- he clearly is not impressed at all. I replied to his email and apologized for ‘not meeting his expectations.’ …What do you guys think–</p>
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<p>Good e-mail. At some point, you might want to meet with the prof, if it’s possible, to duke it out face-to-face and try to figure out whether or not there’s anything else you need to do to salvage things.</p>
<p>Best of luck…!</p>
<p>I wanted to share my thoughts with you on the e-mail your professor wrote.</p>
<p>Regardless of your work, my immediate impression of your professor is that he has no clue on how to manage people. No one with any understanding of management principles would send an e-mail like he sent you. It offers no means of guidance on how to improve your work output. It just tries to shame you into work - that’s inappropriate and indicative of bad management.</p>
<p>I have managed teams with individuals of varying levels of skill and initiative. Though I’m sure there are people out there who join teams but just don’t want to work full-stop, I’ve yet to meet anyone like that. Even people with limited skills and initiative can be used productively by good management. All this exchange really indicates to me is that your professor is a bad manager.</p>
<p>Furthermore, don’t fall into the trap of thinking this is a favour he did for you. Unless the internship was earning you $1000+ per week, he was paying you at rates below what industry would pay an engineer (fair enough because you are a sophomore but it means this wasn’t charity by any stretch of the imagination). This notion that some faculty and industry imbue into young engineers that they should be thankful for the experience/opportunity is craziness. Working relationships are mutual relationship.</p>
<p>That said, I believe you did the right thing in your response to him. You expressed regret for the way he felt. You explained what you had been doing and why perhaps you were unable to meet his expectations. And you did not get mean (which makes you a better person than him). The only thing I might have changed if I was writing the reply is I would have limited my expressions of regret (a succinct expression of regret is good in these situations but you don’t want to grovel) and watched my grammar (your initial post suggests you have good English skills so use them and don’t capitalise phrases for emphasis as it can send the wrong message).</p>
<p>Don’t let this experience shake you and don’t lose your cool with this guy. You’re only a sophmore so you have a lot of experiences ahead and a lot more time to prove yourself.</p>
<p>Alkine.</p>
<p>Considering you sent me a PM asking extremely basic finance info, and that when I didn’t reply with what you expected (but instead nicely told you to research it) you replied insulting me: I’d be concerned. </p>
<p>The research would have taken you a minute or two at most, yet you wanted me to tell you–to do the work for you. That’s a scary thought. You need to change your outlook on life, kid. Sorry. It’s just the harsh truth.</p>
<p>I am so not surprised to read your post on here. I have an idea where your professor is coming from. Heck, if you can’t google acronyms…I’d write a similar letter myself. ha!</p>