All throughout middle and high school, I was told that I was very gifting in the humanities. I used to love to read, and contribute to class discussions. I went to an Ivy League where I graduated as a Comparative Literature major last Spring, and that summer I got a role as a legal coordinator for a sports unit where I have to read and write a lot (draft interview/investigative memos, review policy for errors, read articles relevant to our field/work, read court documents).

During my final semester of senior year, I relied pretty heavily on AI to write my thesis. The ideas were my own, and I'd feed AI my concepts and ask it to generate a sophisticated sentence establishing that information. I think this marked the beginning of the end for me!!!

Since graduating my screen time has gone up immensely (especially on Tiktok), and at work i'm staring at a screen for about 8 hours a day. I rely heavily on our company approved AI tools to do the simplest tasks, like drafting emails, or helping me create sentences.

My brain feels like actual mush that is disconnected from my body and useless. I literally feel like a zombie that can barely form a thought. Even when consuming written content, my brain can barely string the words together, and immediately bounces to the end of a sentence. 5 minutes ago I literally asked AI to make a fun-fact up about me for an upcoming presentation. I feel like this has also hindered my ability to communicate, function as a human being. I am such a bore at work, and used to be such a bubbly and fun person :(.

This is especially troublesome considering that I will be applying to law school next year, and have to start LSAT studying soon. I've also been trying to relearn AP US History and AP Gov because I literally have 0 recollection of anything I've learned since since COVID hit, and know nothing about how the world functions.

Anyways, sorry for the vent. My main questions is how can I rebuild my reading and writing skills? I tried watching Khan Academy videos on grammar to go back to the basics and rebuild, but it's just not doing much for me.

Any ideas?

What kinds of emails have you received from students that immediately made you think they were immature or naive, creating a bad first impression?

I just started a Post-Bacc certificate program. My advisor is meant to be the head of the department. When I was first accepted I emailed them asking to set up an appointment (I was told I had to do this), and I followed up 2 times over the course of a month. I never received a reply and thought I might have the wrong email.

I was able to register for my fall classes, but I reached out again politely reintroducing myself and asking to set up a meeting. I’m 28 and this is the start of a career change, so I really want to make sure I’m finishing my program as efficiently as possible. I explained that in the email as well.

They replied at 8pm with one sentence asking if I was free the next day. I explained I had to work but could meet over the phone or through video call, and I never received a reply.

I work a day job as well and don’t have time to be chasing people down. I totally understand professors are busy, and I don’t take the lack of response personally but I’m paying a lot of money and feel like I’ve been left to figure everything out by myself, when I was really hoping for support since this is a new area of study for me. Is it rude to contact the school and ask to be set up with a new advisor?

I graduated 3 years ago, and at the time a couple professors I TA’d for agreed to write me a letter of recommendation for medical school. I never had them written at the time unfortunately since I wasn’t ready to apply. I followed up with them in 2024 over email just to update them but not recently.

I had some personal health setbacks and had some difficulty building my experience post grad which is why I delayed. I will now be applying in the 2027 cycle. I dont have a personal statement or anything ready, just my TA evaluations from 2023 and my resume.

Im getting a lot of anxiety about them forgetting me or possibly ghosting me since it’s been almost 3 years. I know they still teach on campus.

Would it be better to follow up in person after their class or via email on the same thread they agreed to write the letter? What else could I provide to help them write the strongest letter?

While my making this post is inspired by one comment in particular, it is also reflective of a shift in attitude I've seen on the sub lately.

Generally, I tend to be of the opinion that this is the internet and we are all adults. As long as comments aren't insulting or aggressive, I tend to leave comments that are blunt or more harsh on posts. Perhaps that has been my error, and I shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.

I do also understand that tone gets lost online; I have had students here get upset with me because they thought I was being rude when that wasn't my intention. I understand that that happens.

But the sub is getting mean - arguably, it is already mean. I understand and appreciate that many of the questions posted here rub people the wrong way because of interactions that they have had with students in real life, but, some users need to chill. To just take a step back, and take a deep breath before commenting.

There is no need to revel in and mock the misfortune of students. There is no need to be insulting and condescending when a student is asking a genuine question. There is no need to accuse a student of lying about a disability or a personal tragedy. There is no need to heavily downvote every single post from students - especially when the student isn't even being a dink lol, and they're just asking a question.

Moving forward, I'm going to be a little bit more heavy-handed in removing uncivil comments. I am asking the community to please report comments that are overly aggressive and overly negative. I do my best to monitor threads, but reporting brings things directly to the inbox.

I would just like to foster a little bit more of a positive environment here.

Thanks!

Hi there! I'm a first year M.S student, and there is a course that I'm absolutely interested in. My program is broad and I don't have fully "required" courses, but it'd fit perfectly into my speciality.

I'm currently on the waitlist and debating reaching out to the professor. I generally avoided this in undergrad, but I'm curious if the etiquette is different here.

My advisor suggested I give it a go, but I just don't want to give a bad first impression!

Hi all, for a quick background, I switched my major from CJ to environmental science last March so this is my first semester with classes for my new major. My geology prof has three AI assignments that are each worth 36 points. The class has 800 points total, meaning ~13.5% of my final grade will come from them.

The dilemma: I am very anti-ai. Mainly because I am an artist and environmentalist. I refuse to use it. For these assignments I have to use ChatGPT (I cant even use Ecosia's AI, which is my browser of choice because of their positive environmental impact).

The goal of one of the assignments is to teach us that we cannot trust everything AI says/provides and to help us think critically about AI results. Another assignment's goal is to help us identify rocks. The third is supposed to demonstrate how you can use AI to brainstorm, learn new things, and improve your life.

What really pisses me off: this professor claims to "stand with all movements that seek to end injustices, uplift people, promote diversity, equality, and peace, and create a just and more equitable world to live in. If you are making an effort toward these ends and think I can help, please let me know..." Yet requires us to use ChatGPT and doesn't mention anything about alternative assignments for students who feel uncomfortable with AI use. He also provides AI prompts to help us create study guides but says that we can only use content from the class that we upload into the prompts. If I cant use any outside sources, I definitely dont need a bot to make me a study guide. I dont care if it takes me longer to put together.

Maybe Im just too black-and-white, or unfamiliar with traditional (rather than social) science culture surrounding AI, but this does not sit right with me at all. I plan on talking to him about how I feel about these assignments. I refuse to sacrifice my morals for a class covering a topic that I'm not even interested in pursuing.

What do you think about this?
Has anyone encountered a situation like this before? If so, how did you handle it?

I'll take input from anyone (students, professors, developers, pro-AI, anti-AI, literally anyone). Give me your unbiased or at least less biased opinions. I know I am biased against AI, so maybe I'm not seeing the benefits these assignments could give me.

Hi everyone. I ran into a former professor of mine today who is an absolute gem. I saw them pretty often last semester during office hours/class and really enjoyed talking with them. Due to some unfortunate circumstances that are out of their control they don’t have an office to meet in currently, and they mentioned the idea of grabbing coffee to catch up. I absolutely love the idea and always hear about profs and students grabbing coffee/lunch together ! Do I follow up on that by reaching out or do I wait till they reach out first? I don’t really know how all the college social dynamics work so I apologize if this seems like an obvious question.

It feels almost criminal to have to pay for school and then get a professor that requires you to use a platform as expensive as cengage? Is there no cap on how much professors can make students spend on material for their classes? Its so frustrating honestly because i dont get any financial aid and have been paying for the past 3 semesters put of pocket. I emailed my professor and just no care or help at all, she cant even get my name right and its above my email?! Are most professors starting to use cengage?! Ive never heard of it until last week

Today I had my Computer Networks exam, and I’m honestly overthinking something I did at the very end.

A while ago, my professor had told me that my handwriting wasn't good and had scolded me about it before. So during today's exam, I genuinely tried to write as neatly as possible.

When I finished the exam and was submitting my answer sheet, I wrote a small note at the very end:

“Respected ma'am, I hope you understand and forgive my handwriting. I tried my best to present neatly. Thank you.”

I didn't mean anything sarcastic or disrespectful by it. I genuinely just wanted to acknowledge what she had told me before and let her know that I tried.

But now I'm wondering if I shouldn't have written anything at all.

I'm especially worried that she might read it and then bring it up in front of the whole class or scold me for writing a personal message on the answer sheet.

Do you guys think I did something wrong? If you're a professor/teacher, how would you interpret a note like this?

And if she does mention it in front of everyone, what's the best way for me to respond without making the situation worse?

Hey, so I’m a new TA. I’ll admit, I don’t have the most impressive record, I’m a first year masters’ student, I had a mediocre undergrad gpa, didn’t even get an A in the particular class. I think they only hired me because they simply needed a TA for the class.

This is my first time ever doing this, and I just had my first office hours session and it did not go well…there were around 15 students who showed up and I kept trying to explain things but no matter what, I just couldn’t explain myself very well. There were also a few questions I couldn’t answer, and I’m afraid I gave them some wrong answers at some point. I’m pretty sure that didn’t leave a good impression, and I’m terrified for when the course gets more difficult and then 30+ students come to office hours with way more questions…

Anyway, I already know that I’m clearly not very good at this. On top of the grading load I’m going to have (200+ students), I’m terrified that I’m not good enough to be able to help students effectively. I’m also really unsure of how much I should be emailing my prof for clarification. I email him like once or twice a day (mostly sending him the homework or about logistics), but that seems to be too much considering his response rate. I’m also afraid that asking for too many conceptual clarifications will make me seem even more incompetent.

I’ll admit, I took this job because I thought it’d be a good opportunity and I also needed funding and hadn’t had much work experience. But I’m kind of regretting it now, since assuming they don’t hire me again, I’m going to lose my funding anyway…

Sorry this was very rambly, I just really need advice as I’m really struggling right now.

Summary: Does earning full professor at my current institution make me less competitive for other jobs?

I teach at a small regional university in the US with below median salaries and small raises (that don't keep up with inflation). For earning tenure/promotion we get a 5k salary bump and for earning full professor we earn a 6k salary bump. Neither of these raises have been adjusted for years. I earned promotion and tenure a few years back and now I can start preparing to apply for full professor.

However, I don't plan on staying at my current institution for the rest of my career for various reasons. I'm on the job market and I am fine with the idea of having to earn tenure/promotion again at a different (more competitive) institution. So at this point, I'm associate professor applying mostly for assistant professor positions. In discussion with my colleagues, some of them have argued that being a full professor could limit potential employment elsewhere for a couple of reasons:

1. Applying for a job without tenure looks strange from a full professorship, so this practically makes you less eligible for assistant professor postings. I know my eyebrows would raise if I saw a full professor applying for one of our tenure-track positions.

2. There are less associate/full prof/open rank positions than there are assistant professor jobs.

My basic only incentive to get full professor at this point is a 6k base salary bump, so I am weighing whether to pursue that (with all its requisite paperwork) or to just focus on being more competitive for outside positions. I don't want to potentially limit my future opportunities.

Thoughts? I tagged the humanities but I'm open to everyone.

Why does UCL ask for sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity and gender amongst other things in the faculty application forms? Is this typical in UK?

What happens if you don't disclose anything?

I'm currently an experimental STEM postdoc who just signed my contract for a TT R1 assistant professor faculty position to begin in a year's time, so fall 2027.

Presently, I have just started my 2nd year of this postdoc and plan to end my postdoc in summer 2027. I have already completed a postdoc project so I do have a publication deliverable from this postdoc. I will, and am expected to, work on my postdoc projects during work hours, but want to find better use of my time outside of work hours in preparation for this transition.

What would you advise to better use the remainder of my postdoc time (~10 months) to ease this postdoc-faculty transition while working on my postdoc projects? Think about grant proposals, set up lab website, think of and do PhD/postdoc recruitment, campus visits, conferences?

I initially posted this in r/Professors, but it was removed, so I’m posting here to get some perspectives.

I’m curious to get some outside perspectives on this because I’m not sure if I’m overthinking it.
My husband is 37 and a university professor. He often takes his students (both male and female) out for lunch. Recently, he has also started going out to bars with some of them on Saturday nights. They’re undergraduate students, around 21–23 years old.
He also told me that he’s in their Snapchat group.
I know professors can have friendly relationships with their students, and I’m not suggesting that anything inappropriate is necessarily happening. I’m just wondering where the normal boundaries are here.

I need advice on how to properly ask for an excused absence for a wedding. The issue is on both days they have labs and when I'm looking at the syllabus they don't really have any thing they considered an excused absence outside of Athletics and being sick. When I'm looking at the attendance policy I don't know if telling them I won't be available for class because of wedding counts. I just want to like what would be the best way to tell my professors for labs that I won't be able to make it because I have a wedding to go to in September. Any advice is welcome.

He really likes Dolly Parton, so much so, that it was even apart of his introduction before she sadly passed away. He was very upset about it. so I drew a picture of her and I was wondering if I could give it to him. I’m afraid of how it might come off, my search results say to give it to him after the semester, but I don’t think by then the drawing will have any merit as it might now. it is week 3 of the semester.

edit:

Though the comments are overwhelmingly supportive, I decided against it. I thought it would be weird since we do not interact—at all and I only spoke once to him on the first day of classes. I’m the least active student ever, so maybe giving a gift to him would make me seem more of an oddity than a nice student. Thank you for the kind responses.

I recently got sick with pneumonia, bronchitis, strep throat, bronchospasms, and sepsis. I was hospitalized for 4 days and it weakened my heart last month.

I was diagnosed with heart failure due to my heart functioning at only 30% and my left heart valve being weakened. I am currently on a lifevest to prevent sudden cardiac death.

I was told to take a break from school and prioritize resting. However, it’s my last year of college. I’m almost done and I didn’t wanna fall behind. Unfortunately, I am struggling trying to balance my health and school so I should’ve listened.

A few days ago I was sent to the ER and almost admitted to the hospital. Due to my condition, I have spent the last few days going to doctor’s appointments for a follow up and getting labs drawn. My medications give me extreme fatigue and migraines. I get very dizzy and it’s hard to stay awake. I also have ADHD and I am no longer able to take my adderall so managing school is a bit rough. I have a procedure in two days. All of my assignments are due the day of my procedure. I didn’t get to do them before Monday because I also have a lot due on Thursday-Sunday.

My body is very unpredictable. One day I am doing great. The next I am in the ER or in the hospital. Or I am just extremely fatigue and in pain.

So as you can see, I am going through a lot. I feel like I should’ve been patient with myself and let my body recover. But I also really want to graduate on time. Thoughts?

Edit: For those who might ask how I got so sick, I am a one year old teacher. I had a baby who was extremely sick. The whole class ended up getting sick including me. I don’t think my body was used to being exposed to so many germs.

My first quiz of the semester is on Wednesday and the only information she gave us is that it will be om chapter 1 in class and online. Of course I'm assuming it's not open note because she didn't say otherwise, but is it stupid if I send her an email asking if it will be open note? I just want to make sure I didn't miss her saying anything about it during class.

Thank you!

My exam was at 5 pm. On good weather days the commute is 1.15 to 1.30 hours. I left at 3 pm, but an accident happened in the middle of my commute at 3.30 pm (I have proof of this). I don't know how much time I lost there but it seemed like a lot because i tried to oblige the traffic rules which meant I couldn't use one lane, but a lot of people took me over there by keeping in that line while it was forbidden and I drove in the middle road where apparently in the midst of the traffic jam a car had breaken down (but I have no proof of this). I was half an hour late on the exam and not allowed anymore to take the test. Now I'm not sure if I did anything wrong here, I could have left even earlier, but on the other hand based on my usual commutes I felt I would have made it in 2 hours. Google Maps says the usual commute is between 1.15 and 2.15 hours. Would a professor understand this, or would they say it's my own fault and I should have left even earlier? Would just sending an article about the 3.30 pm accident be enough to excuse myself?

I know some of you may have the immediate question: why would you start a PhD when you don't have a secure funding support?

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming the institution, but the fact is that I was given a very short time to decide whether to take this offer and relocate, then problems with the funding happened out of my expectation. I still want to do a PhD, but I don't want to keep myself in a big financial trouble, so I'm looking to re-apply to other programmes.

The Gen Z stare, or that blank stare that young people give you in class whenever you ask a question or for any participation/socialization. I'm a College student and I had this discussion with a professor last semester. They told me it got really noticeable after the COVID quarantine. What sparks this question NOW is my experience in a recent gen ed course where there are lots of Freshmen. Every time the professor asked for anybody to answer a question or collaborate on work, people blankly stared. Nobody giggled, chatted amongst themselves, shrugged, looked around bashfully. Just stares. It was pretty weird. How long have you all been noticing this behavior?

I had a class with this guy first semester freshman year where we sat next to each other, we had some small talk, and some of the things he said seemed a little weird but I was friendly to him. We haven't really talked at all since then.

I walked into one of my classes this year on the first day he was sitting with another guy, he invited me to sit with him and I did. We talked about what we did over the summer, and he mentioned something about his home town - but it was a different city than he told me his freshman year (I remember because my mom is from the same city). He also told me about an internship he had at a prestigious company, and said I should join him there.

I decided to look him up on Linkedin because I was curious to see if I was misremembering, but his linkedin says he went to high school in a different state in a completely different part of the country of the places he said he was from. There was also no mention of the company he name dropped to me.

So I'm basically thinking this guy is a pathological liar but I don't really have concrete evidence as he still could've just moved/not included role on his Linkedin. Our next class he also just creeped me out, he was acting overly close to me, and brought up random things I said freshman year which I don't remember saying (wouldn't be surprised if he made these up too because some of them I don't sound like something I would say). He also told a story which seemed really implausible, and his other friend (not sure if they are really friends tbh) basically said he doubted the story. He also has body odor.

Even outside of this every time he talks now it's setting off my alarm bells, like I think there is something genuinely up with him. I don't want to seem like I'm ableist either, I have neurodivergent brothers and I am usually friendly with everybody.

Anyway, I honestly feel really uncomfortable being with this guy. There is a seating chart now so I'm stuck sitting next to him, but there is also going to be a semester long group project with random teams. I was thinking about emailing my professor to make sure I'm not in a group with him. I'm not sure about doing this because I feel like it may make me just seem like I'm a dick to the professor, or if the professor does say yes but tells the other student about the situation and then it's going to be super awkward for the rest of the year.

Is it worth the risk to talk to the professor about this? He seems nice but I honestly have no sense of his perspective in this situation which is why I am on this subreddit. I am really not the type of person to act like this and I sympathize with the guy if he is just trying to make friends, but I just would not feel comfortable with him having my phone number or working with him closely for the rest of the year.