• Lists,  School School School

    Tips for Emailing Your Professors – From a Professor!

    In recent years, one of the most common things I’m asked about by students is email. Specifically, how to email your professors. When I first started getting this, I was a little confused by it – until I realized that we’re at the point where none of our traditional students remember a world without IM or texts. For the current batch of college students, communication has always been getting increasingly informal, and increasingly instantaneous, and so it seems that many find themselves anxious about saying “the right thing” when sending a formal email to a professor for the first time. So I’ve decided to compile some tips about how to…

  • Lists,  School School School

    12 Tips for Adjusting to College from a Student Turned Professor

    This year marks my 7th year teaching college. It’s an absolutely CRAZY thing for me to think about, since it seriously just feels like yesterday that I was receiving my MA. But time marches ever forward, and with seven years of teaching under my belt, in addition to the five years I spent in higher ed. as a student, I feel like I’ve picked up a few tricks of the trade along the way. Between the mistakes I made and lessons I learned as a student myself, and the years I’ve spent watching class after class of new freshmen arrive (and then graduate!) – here are the top twelve tips…

  • School School School

    Back to School Week: Academic Advice from the Other Side of the Desk

    So here we are at our last Back to School Week (that turned into two weeks because I’m still not quite back in the blogging groove) Post for this year! Some academic advice direct from your resident student-turned-professor. Being relatively young for a prof certainly has it’s benefits in being able to give this kind of advice because I am both familiar with professor expectations (having them myself!) and remember keenly what it’s like to be a student. So here are Magpie’s top 9 pieces of academic advice for the college student! Go to office hours. Seriously. Your professors have that time specifically set aside to meet with and help…

  • Lists,  School School School

    Back to School Week: Common Faux Pas When Communicating With Professors

    So, funny story. I’ve literally been agonizing over this post for a year and a half. I had originally intended it to be part of back to school week LAST year, but ended up chickening out of posting it. Why? Because it seems like a fairly good topic, and probably (hopefully) contains sound advice… Well, mainly because so many other articles I’ve read that are written by professors and deal with this kind of stuff take on such a negative, snarky, and frankly condescending tone. And I don’t want this to be like that. I don’t want to be like that. So I’ve tried my best not to be. Students…