Tonight’s Email Etiquette proves to be really useful. I am recently stuck with finding undergraduate research, because although I am used to ask professors questions after class and build a good relationship with them, I was really intimidated to reach out to professors that never knew me before for a research opportunity. I would like to learn more about the professors, and the usual way I did was to check out the official school website, check out on arXiv, or just search randomly in google. Sometimes I would consider Facebook but I got really nervous of the possibility of intruding into other people’s privacy and leaving a bad impression, since I am not too familiar with the U.S social media system and the usual norms people follow in social interaction.

But today I really learned some useful websites: LinkedIn, Research Gate, and Google Scholar, especially the latter two which I had not even heard of before. Those websites make ‘professional stalking’ safe and welcomed, and could provide information that I had not found previously. Moreover, I learned that looking at other people’s Twitter account when not being their friend is not that ‘bad’ at all, so I can even consider more interactions online when I am doing the ‘stalking’. As for the emails, I personally think I am doing pretty well so far in being polite and nice to others–but one big problem is that I have to learn to be more concise, which I am training myself. The most reassuring technique I learned is about follow-up emails–such a wonderful trick of following up without worrying about possibly annoying others!

Certainly gained more confidence in my research-hunting preparation. Gotta try it out soon!