Why won't professors respond to my e-mails?

stradmom
Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:10:27 +0000

I have many colleagues who are renaming their office hours as “student hours” in an effort to get more people to come visit them during that time. If you show up and there’s a line of people looking for help about the recent midterm or something, just come back the next week…when it will probably be completely deserted.

In regards to your other question, starting a conversation can feel awkward. But it sounds like you’ve done some preliminary digging to find out what kinds of research they do, so you could always come up with a few questions based on that data. Ask them how they got started. Tell them your plans for the future and ask their advice on what you should be doing now. See if they’ll let you shadow someone in their lab for a day or something. If they can’t offer you something, ask them to recommend another prof for you to contact. Smile.

Even if they end up declining to give you a research position, send a nice thank-you email afterwards. The academic world is very, very small, and politeness never hurts.