Thread by @crampell

Roughly twice a year, I get emails from students assigned to read a newspaper columnist's work for an English class. It is very flattering to end up in someone's curriculum! I had an assignment like this back in the day, and it's weird to be on the other end of it. /1

Part of the standard assignment today seems to be emailing the writer and getting them to respond to a question of some kind. Often the student does this by sending vague or abstract questions that take some time for me to figure out how to respond to. (See screen grab.) /2

Given other things on my plate, these requests often get pushed to the bottom of my inbox, and I end up responding late or never, which I feel lousy about. And probably the students are annoyed too. /3

I want to respond to these students. And based on past email exchanges with some of these kids, I get the sense that receiving a response earns them a higher grade, which I want to help with!
My guess is other columnists/writers who get these emails may be in same boat /4

So fwiw, my advice to students completing these assignments: If your teacher asks you to email a writer, and you want to increase odds of response, ask something narrow/concrete/easy to reply to. What are your favorite topics to cover? Who are your role models as writers? etc /5

This is probably good advice for journalists too of course -- if you're cold-emailing someone who's likely to be busy, shorter and more concrete questions are often helpful for increasing odds of prompt response /6

Also the reason I'm posted this thread here on Twitter is that the students who write me sometimes mention they were assigned to monitor my social media writings for class too. Which as educational prospect is, you know, terrifying. 😬 /7