Another Stupid Email Question...

[rockbender]

I emailed some professors several months ago, and I never got a response. (I don't know why I thought emailing them in July would be a good idea. It clearly wasn't.) I figured that they were busy/away for the summer and that I should wait until the fall to send them a follow up email, which is what I did.

However - it has been so long since the first email that I wonder if I should just "start over" rather than "follow up". It seems silly to say "Hi, I contacted you earlier about..." when that earlier was over 3 months ago. At the same time, it would be silly if I sent them an email very similar to the first and realizing that it sounded familiar, they found the old one hidden in their inbox. What do you think would be the better approach?

Sorry for all of these questions - I am clearly clueless about email etiquette. I did search the forum for previous posts but I didn't come across anything (though maybe I missed something?)

Thanks for your help!

[ktel]

I think I would do the follow up e-mail on the off chance that they remembered me. Otherwise I do think you run the risk of looking like you're just randomly e-mailing professors with no forethought.

[surefire]

I second ktel's advice. If it would make you feel better, you can qualify by saying something like, in July you just "reached out" or "touched base" or made "preliminary contact" but recognize that e-mails in the summer months can get sucked into the void (which is true). That might help mitigate the "I contacted you regarding x, like, a long time ago and you never got back to me" weirdness. If you conduct yourself like this, it gives the profs an out (because, even though the "summer void" is true, most people still feel bad when reminded that we missed a correspondence), plus, you get to highlight your organization and forethought.

I'm in my first year of my PhD and I ask etiquette questions of senior students FREQUENTLY; there's nothing wrong with wanting to optimize your approach. I'm learning SO MANY THINGS the hard way in this new endeavour, I don't think it's ill-conceived to not want to learn all lessons through trial and error!

[rockbender]

Thanks for the great advice! I will definitely just send the follow up email, and I'll try to include some palliative phrases about the preliminary contact being lost in the void. I think the qualification takes off any accusatory tone that could be interpreted from such an email

@surefire - Good to know I'm not the only one asking so many questions about etiquette! Sometimes I feel like such a noob... but I guess everyone was at this point sometime in their career, right? lol