How to Write an "I never go to class, but can I have your notes?" Email.

Finals week is upon college students. A semester's worth of late-night studying and writing will be over in one seemingly endless week. Sure, some students have no finals this week. A few have only one before Wednesday. Other students have six finals and final papers to turn in. This student will not wrap-up finals before Friday. Finals week is when the worst and the best of us comes out to finish off the semester.

Understandably, the average college student will not obtain perfect attendance due to a variety of reasons: illness, tragedy, sleep-deprivation, or a combination of all three (for the 21+ crowd in Bloomington, I blame Kilroy's). When a student misses a class, the student might check with a class friend about any missed material. If said student has no class friends who can help, then often an email is sent out to the entire class to see if one willing classmate will share notes.


Ok, fine. I can handle an email about a day's worth of notes. What I cannot handle is an email the day before finals week concerning notes for an entire semester's worth of material. Actually, let me rephrase that. If you send an email to ask for a final exam worth of notes, then you deserve to be criticized (maybe not, but just go with it).

Still, if you do choose to send out an email (which inevitably annoys the students who show up to class or take responsibility for not going to class), then you should adhere to some guidelines.

DO:
1) Acknowledge the frequency of this type of email and apologize for any ill-will
2) Use proper grammar, punctuation, and diction with few errors
3) Offer compensation, respectfully
4) Specify the notes you need
5) Write sincerely

DON'T:
1) Write in a way that highlights your less-than-pleasant qualities
2) Refer to the exam as "this bitch"
3) Refer to the "dude" before you who emailed the class about notes much more eloquently than you do
4)  Put a money sign as a replacement for the letter "s" (See: Ca$h)
5) Use informal acronyms in the middle of anywhere in your plea for notes (lol, jk, ttyl, roflmao)

"DO" EXAMPLE:

"DON'T" EXAMPLE:

Also something you should avoid is sending out fourteen--yes, FOURTEEN--copies of the same email on the same day. Even if this is accidental, you have just annoyed an entire class of more than 100 students, probably.

My phone ding'd with notifications for a solid minute. I thought, "Oh, hey, Miss Popular." To my dismay, it was some dumb-dumb who does not know how to use the "send" button. So, please, if you choose to skip class, then take responsibility for those missed notes. If you choose to buy notes, then please pay careful attention to how you approach the mass-email option.

Sincerely,

Kim

P.S. Good luck on finals!