February, 2024
I've been thinking about an experience I had a few years ago.
I was teaching a large introductory-level class. There were about 180 students in the class. I gave a midterm. The midterm was a take-home exam, and students had a little more than 24 hours to take the exam. I posted the exam to Canvas around 9pm. I then went to sleep around 11pm. The exam was due the next day at 11:59pm (so more than 24 hours later).
When I woke up (around 6am), I had the regular set of emails that come in overnight. But notably were two emails from the same student. The first email was sent at 1am. It asked for an extension of another 24 hours. Students emailing the night before an exam is common (note - if you do this, you will almost always be denied your request - more on this below). But remember, this was already after the exam was posted, so I was not inclined to give any extensions (in fact, I had stated this in class).
The second email was sent at 4am. It read: "Prof. Sobel, I have been waiting for your response to my last email asking for an extension. Because I have not heard from you, I am going to assume that you approve it and I will turn my exam in a day later, and I assume it will be graded without penalty"
This is not how extensions work, nor is this a way of thinking about communication with a professor, which is the subject of this post.
***
About a decade ago, I struggled with a bout of insomnia. I would go to sleep, but then get up in the middle of the night, and was usually awake for a few hours before I could get back to sleep. Sometimes when that would happen, I'd check emails, and even respond to a few of them. Many years later, one of my graduate students told me that this terrified him - he thought I was always working. It worried him that his chosen career path involved having to work nonstop at all hours of the night.
(A great irony is that same student now is a faculty member. He and his wife just had a baby, and his son's feeding schedule is forcing him awake at all hours of the night. And sometimes he checks his email and responds, so he's sending the same message to his students. He relayed this story to me a few months ago, and realized how having children changes you).
The general point, however, is that most faculty are not awake at 1am or 4am, and even if they are, they are not really available to talk with you. So, even if they are awake and checking email, they are unlikely to respond.
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But there's another part of that last section that I want to emphasize. We, your faculty, are engaged by the university to do a job. There are no standard hours. So, yes, some faculty sleep until noon and stay up all night working. But most of us - particularly the ones with children, or eldercare issues, or even just a healthy work-life balance - do not check emails all day and all night long. There should be an expectation between sending an email and getting a reply. What should that expectation be?
I polled a few colleagues. A few said by the end of the day. One said a week. But the modal response was 24 hours. Even with that, there were a lot of "ifs" and "buts".
So, perhaps 24 hours is close to a norm, but there are other norms as well. Here are a few:
1) Weekends/Holidays don't count. If you send an email on a Saturday or a Sunday, there should not be an expectation that a professor will read the email over the weekend. That email won't be read or responded to until Monday at the earliest. In fact, sending email on the weekends is a terrible idea because it will often get read on the weekend, the faculty member will think about responding on Monday, and then possibly forget until they get a nudge email five days later (if they have that setting).
2) After 5pm doesn't count. Any email send after 5pm on a weekday won't be read until the next day (in fact, this is a bad idea for pretty much the same reason described above). And it might not be responded to until the following day.
3) If the faculty member's vacation message is on, then don't expect a reply until the message says so. This is particularly important for sabbatical messages. Faculty who are on sabbatical check their email all the time, but being on sabbatical means that they don't have to respond on anyone's schedule other than their own. They'll respond to you, particularly if you're emailing them about something the following semester after their sabbatical is over, but you will have to wait.
So, here's another way to think about it - at least one business day unless specifically told otherwise. At least one full work day. So, if you send an email on a regular Monday before 5pm, you should expect a response before 5pm on Wednesday (assuming Tuesday/Wednesday were not holidays).
***
OK. But here's the thing. EVERYONE is busy. And EVERYONE has some kind of special circumstances. And our society weirdly values EVERYONE wanting EVERYTHING right now.
What am I doing right now? Well, right now I'm writing this blog entry from my dining room table because my son is sick at home. He's in our guest room sleeping. I'm working from home for a large chunk of time this morning, and missing several meetings that I will have to reschedule in order to take care of him. Is my email open? Sure. But it's not clear that I would be able to give a long response to anything because he's pretty sick, and it requires my full attention. And honestly, my child's health is more important to me than any of my work emails. So, is the heuristic I mentioned above (i.e., one business day) right? Probably not. One business day is the best case scenario.
I do hope that if students don't hear from their advisor, they email me (as Director of Undergraduate Studies). I hope that if students want advise about our curriculum, they email me. I hope that if students have questions about this blog, they email me. I hope students in my class email me with questions about class material or course structure, or even letters of recommendation. But I also hope that there are realistic expectations about how long it takes to respond. Not just to me, but to everyone. And thinking about this with space and grace - with the idea that everyone is busy and going through things and trying to do the best they can - is a good assumption for all our everyday interactions.
One other thing. You know what works better than email: the telephone. Professors will respond to you if you call them. And all of our phone numbers are listed in this thing called the faculty directory, or just by calling the Brown operator. It's quaint, but highly effective. What also works (and really, what works the best and will make us by far the least upset): Going to Office Hours. Most faculty post their office hours at the bottom of their emails. There's a list of all faculty office hours in the main office of the CLPS Department (that's probably true for other departments as well, I don't know). In person is always better than virtual.
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Postscript.
I showed a draft of this post to one of the students who works in my lab. She asked me if I made up the anecdote at the beginning. No. I did not. That really did happen. And for the record, the student did not get an extension.
But it does raise another issue, which is when do I email a professor asking for an extension. There's a lot more variance on this. But my answer is at least a week before. Asking for an extension and not needing it is a lot better than waiting for the last minute to ask because you do. Also, be aware that asking for one does not automatically mean it will be granted. If fact, extensions are rarely granted the night before, but at least I am more likely to give them when the reasons are valid* and there is a ramp-up in time.
*So, what is a valid reason to ask for an extension? There are many (and perhaps I'll do anothe post on this at some point). But here are two that are not valid:
(1) "I have so much work for another class" or "I have three midterms/papers/assignments all due at the same time."
(2) I have an athletic/extracurricular event that is required of me.
I pretty much always say no to those two.