Dude, That’s Rude: Email

You probably received more emails than texts yesterday. You might have refreshed your inbox as often as your Facebook feed. You possibly spent an equal amount of time responding to emails as doing your pset. Let’s face it, email takes over our lives as Harvard students. Here are the things that can make email that extra bit worse.

“Replying all” to a mailing list: Maybe you sent your hilarious comment intended for your friend to your whole house. Or maybe you wanted to take this opportunity to campaign for UC. Or you thought everyone needed to be informed that you want to be taken off this mailing list. Whatever it is, we don’t need yet another email in our overflowing inboxes from you.

Pubbing irrelevant events over a mailing list: Let’s face it, no one in the Republican Club is interested in the #happier Halloween discussion event. Keep your lists separate, and our unread email count will thank you.

Sending a one word response: “Okay”–it is the ultimate conversation killer. We labored over the phrasing of an email to you, our favorite professor, and you responded with one word. Worse, your assistant responded on your behalf and our well-crafted email was for nothing.

Taking a month to respond: We waited patiently as you spent a whole month replying to our email. Then we emailed you back immediately. And you spent another few weeks replying to that one. We know you check your email on your phone when you’re bored in math lecture–punctuality would be appreciated.

Taking 6 paragraphs to say nothing: @DeanKhurana, we see you and your strategic neutrality over the HUDS strike. Seriously, we just want to know if the strike is over. But you make us comb through 1000 words of diplomacy to be assured that soft serve will return to Annenberg.

We’re talking to you–housemates, professors, Dean Khurana–and we would just like to say: dude, that’s rude.