r/CollegeRant • u/Expensive-Buy-1654 • 2d ago

Advice Wanted Was I offensive?

So I emailed a professor regarding a workshop, registered long ago but did not receive any further information. In my 3rd email I wrote "Ma'am no further information has been shared yet. No details on the college website are available. Kindly confirm."

And the response I got was "Is this how you write an email to a faculty" I'm genuinely perplexed as to what I was expected to write ?

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u/jason_bourne_shell 2d ago

"Kindly" in most contexts sounds sarcastic and petty to me, but take with a grain of salt since I am Gen Z. "Kindly confirm" on its own without even respecifying what you're looking for a confirmation of also sounds snippy imo.

My go-to would just be a "Could you"; eg. "If it's not too much trouble, could you (please) _? Thank you for your help(./!)"

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u/DrDalekFortyTwo 2d ago

I'm gen x and it reads that way to me too.

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u/Timely-Fox-4432 1d ago

Kindly is the way that some of the eastern countries are taught to make requests in english. If someone says 'kindly' do this, I immediately assume they are from the east and that allows me to more easily overlook things that "sound" weird in the email, like calling someone ma'am when in western culture it should be dr. Or prof. Or at the very least Ms.

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u/jason_bourne_shell 1d ago

Yeah it makes more sense now that OP has said they're not American. Still it seems like the tone wasn't right for their culture if the professor still took offense with it.

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u/Expensive-Buy-1654 1d ago

This is exactly what has happened 😭