{"id":812,"date":"2016-10-13T20:28:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T03:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/?page_id=812"},"modified":"2016-10-13T20:28:33","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T03:28:33","slug":"emailing-someone-you-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/tutorials-guides\/other\/emailing-someone-you-dont-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Emailing Someone You Don\u2019t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As part of your final project, you\u2019ll have to email your subject-matter expert to set up a time to speak. It can be a bit stressful to write an email of inquiry to someone you don\u2019t know, but chances are, you\u2019ll have to do this periodically in your life, like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>if you decide to apply for grad school and want to speak to a faculty member about a program.<\/li>\n<li>if you have a question about applying for a job.<\/li>\n<li>if you\u2019d like to schedule an informational interview with someone.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So the ability\u00a0to\u00a0politely and thoughtfully request assistance from someone you haven\u2019t met can really come in handy!<\/p>\n<p>Here are my best tips:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Use the most formal form of address.<\/strong> Write \u201cDear Dr.\u201d or \u201cDear Ms.\u201d or whatever is the most formal title. Do\u00a0<em>not<\/em> address women you haven\u2019t met as \u201cMrs.\u201d or \u201cMiss,\u201d especially if they have a Ph.D. If you\u2019re not 100% sure about someone\u2019s gender, you can address them by their full name, like \u201cDear Miriam Posner.\u201d When you\u2019re requesting a favor from an\u00a0authority, do\u00a0not call them\u00a0by their first name unless they specifically invite you to do so.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Keep it short.<\/strong>\u00a0Your first email shouldn\u2019t lay out all the details and supporting documentation of your inquiry. It\u00a0should be a brief\u00a0description of the favor you\u2019re asking and an inquiry as to whether the person has the time and inclination to participate. If they say yes, that\u2019s when you can send follow-up details. Basically, your first email shouldn\u2019t give the impression that you assume they\u2019ll say yes.<\/li>\n<li><strong>When scheduling a time to speak, defer to that person\u2019s schedule.<\/strong> You will probably need to be as flexible as possible in scheduling a conversation. Do whatever you need to do to make it easy for that person to speak with you. If the person agrees to speak with you, you might start by asking which dates and times are generally best for them, and then finding some times in your schedule that could work. Try to keep the scheduling emails to a minimum.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Give the person some options about how to interact with you.<\/strong>Many people prefer to speak on the phone for things like this, because it\u2019s a lot faster than typing everything out. Let the person decide how they want to speak with you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that\u2019s about it. Be polite and considerate, but be bold in emailing people you don\u2019t know! You never know what might come of it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of your final project, you\u2019ll have to email your subject-matter expert to set up a time to speak. It can be a bit stressful to write an email &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/tutorials-guides\/other\/emailing-someone-you-dont-know\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Emailing Someone You Don\u2019t Know&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":130,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-812","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/812\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh101f16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}