Hi professors — I’ve been working on a personal project where I share and reflect on one question each day. The idea is to help people sharpen their thinking through daily mental reps, especially in business or career settings.

But it’s gotten me thinking more broadly:

• Do you actively teach your students how to ask better questions?
• Is that even something that fits into most curricula?
• And if so, how do you do it? (e.g., frameworks, prompts, Socratic method?)

I’m really curious how educators view the skill of questioning. Is it a foundational tool in your classroom—or something that gets overlooked?

A course I took a year ago didn't go well at all. I was dealing with a lot of personal problems and several untreated mental disorders. The course material was also challenging. I struggled with completing all of the requirements. I constantly asked the professor for extentions, and they were generous tbh. But I still couldn't finish the course.

The emails I sent the professor still haunt me to this day. I repeatedly asked for deadline extentions as if I was entitled to them. My tone was often (very) rude. My behaviour was overall disrespectful and unacceptable.

I've now started taking proper medications and registered with the disabilities office. My attitude has completely changed, and I'm horrified by how deranged I sounded back then.

I couldn't finish the course even with all the extentions I was offered, which I believe means I've wasted the professor's time and caused them stress and frustration for nothing.

I want to send an apology just to acknowledge how unacceptable my behaviour was, and for wasting their time. I don't expect them to reply back though.

Is it too late at this point (this was a year ago)? Would a professor appreciate this apology?

One of my professors is getting married this summer and I’m invited to the wedding, as me and his wife are good friends at work. The problem is the university gift policy. Students are not permitted to give any gifts exceeding 70€ in value to any faculty members.

I already bought them a gift that exceeds the price limit set by the university. What am I supposed to do now?

I understand why that policy is set in place but is there any way around it. If I ask all my classmates to sign a card and we give the gift as a ”group” that could work? That’s a bit weird though, no one else is going to the wedding, but that’s the only real solution I’ve come up with. Should I just directly ask my professor/ talk to administration and explain the situation? I addressing the gift just to my friend could also be fine, but that’s so rude and I really don’t want to do that.

I would not spend nearly 500€ on a wedding present to my professor, he’s really great but we don’t know each other that well. But this is one of my best friends in this city getting married, it’s ridiculous that I can get her and her future husband a nice wedding present because the university policy forbids it.

I have a professor that has 3 assignments which require students to attend different events and create reports around them. Unfortunately none of the events are free and range from $15 to over $100. She has said that failure to complete these results in failing the course.

I finished the assignments and it ended up costing me around $125 but I am fortunate to be in a place to be able to afford that (older student). But I’d imagine there are students who can’t.

I am just curious if this is an okay thing to do since I’ve never experienced this before.

Title says it all. My end goal in 10 years is to be a professor. I will be starting my bachelors or “want” to persay start on it this fall. I’m nervous though as I will need help with scholarships or grants to fund my further education with how things are going politically and economically right now. Also concerned there may not even be a spot for teaching in my arena by the time I’m ready too. Is it foolish to continue to pursue this? Or should I just get a higher degree in a field that is guaranteed? Any advice is appreciated.

If a professor is retired and listed on the university website as professor emeritus, are they still being paid to supervise their grad students? I understand that retired professors do not take on new grad students after retirement. I am thinking of students who started being supervised prior to the professor announcing their retirement. (Edited to add detail)

I recently got a 43% AI usage report on my essay which i wrote by myself. I did ask chatgpt for a sample essay but i 100% did not copy any points from there. i put it in quill bot after that to detect any ai usage to be on the safe side. Ik this sounds weird but i just didn’t want to have even the tiniest bit of ai detection. the first time around i got a 6 or 8% which is why i edited it myself until it was 0%. i am genuinely depressed and disappointed at myself. my professor has emailed me and i’ve sent him proof of my history but im still scared.this is my second violation. please give advice

Hi all honestly I’m kinda baffled I have to ask but how do I deal with a professor who lets his elementary age children run around the class and draw on the during lecture.

I don’t want to get them in trouble or anything but I have ADHD and it’s already difficult for me to concentrate and listen to what is being said. Also honestly I find it super disrespectful to be allow you kids to run amok in a graduate level course. I completely understand not being able to find childcare last minute and having to bring your kids to school but there’s a huge difference between letting your kids quietly work on homework at an open table and letting them actively DRAW ON THE SAME BOARD you are using to give a lecture (and not off to the side either. Like directly on the space where content is being projected.)

Plenty of graduate students have kids of their own and there’s NO WAY we’d be allowed to let our children behave like that. Also these are older elementary school kids who should be perfectly capable of being left alone to entertainer themselves their parents office across the hall from the classroom.

Also this isn’t the first time they’ve brought their kids into class just the most egregiously disruptive.

Am I overreacting for thinking that this kind of behavior is unacceptable and unprofessional?

I’ve noticed multiple of my classmates in different classes consistently calling our professors Mr./Mrs., one of them having a PhD. One of those classmates is someone I have sort of a friendly relationship with, and I told them it was disrespectful after class and they disagreed and said no professors actually care. How do you feel about being called one of those instead of “professor” or Dr.?

I am seriously considering doing post-graduate studies in the field I am majoring in as a senior in undergrad, and asked one of my professors if we could meet so that I could solicit some advice about how to approach this. She said she was happy to, and we ended up having what was a very helpful and encouraging conversation for me.

But something that came up a lot throughout the conversation was how anxiety, self-doubt, and indecision were impacting my process of refining my research interests. I didn't mean to unload on her, and I didn't really go into any detail beyond the fact that I was feeling a lot of anxiety about taking this path, but I am a little bit worried that I came across like I was seeking comfort and counseling rather than academic advice. I don't want to overstep any boundaries with my professors and want to respect their capacity for emotional labor.

Was I inappropriate?

Let me just hop on here real quick. I am a high school student outside of the States (where this research internship thing really started imo) and I see a lot of students my age, specially in this college result season, talking about how they emailed 100+ professors and 3-4 got back to them and now they co-wrote on of their research papers and even got paid for being part of the research group. There are also a lot of programs that offer research mentorship under professors but those are like $5000 in tuition. I really want to build up my portfolio to get into a good US undergrad program but I am skeptical of whether I should put 30-40 hours of time researching professors, their labs and asking for a research internship if they are going to say no, mind that I am a person with no connections whatsoever, through parents or teachers whatever, to these professors. I would also like to know, from the professors who actually say yes to these high-schoolers, what do they expect from the students.

Ok, I got absolutely destroyed over in r/professors for asking this, so I hope this is the correct sub.

A family member who was a professor recently died very unexpectedly. It’s currently unclear if it was an accidental overdose or suicide. I came across his RMP. He had replied to a lot of his students’ reviews back in April 2024, but under the original posting date his responses said “Last Updated March 17, 2025” which was around the day he died.

I’m wondering if anyone who is familiar with RMP can tell me if this means he had updated his responses to each of his students on that day? This would be really telling in order to figure out what happened to him.

I think this question is applicable to those who are used to assessing students' application. In particular, I am wondering whether or not the widespread use or avoidance of generative AI has made any impact on the writing style and the overall content of the letters that students send to you.

I’m in a 4-person group for a class project. From the proposal stage, I was the only one actually doing meaningful work. The others either didn’t contribute at all or did trivial stuff that didn’t align with what we were actually supposed to be doing. I let it go, thinking it would get better for the final project — but it didn’t.

They picked their preferred sections, left me with whatever was left, and still didn’t do their parts properly. I pointed out mistakes and asked for revisions, but they ignored it. I ended up handling all the deadlines and submissions myself.

One member scheduled a mandatory in-person practice. I said I preferred practicing on my own but would still join for the sake of the group. I drove over 2 hours to campus just for this meeting. Another member arrived shortly after me. The one who scheduled it never showed up. He messaged saying he’d be there in “15 minutes,” then “3 minutes,” then just stopped giving a straight answer. Almost an hour later, he told us “you two can practice together.” No explanation. No apology.

I’m now expected to present with these people in front of the class, and I feel completely disrespected. Am I overreacting, or is this seriously not okay?

By the way, I’m at the University of Waterloo. I emailed the instructor, and she replied, “I cannot get involved in a matter of communication within your group.”

The actual course professor is dealing with some family issues, and the instructor is one of his PhD students who has no experience handling situations like this.

What can I do? I’m honestly sick of people saying, “I’m sorry for your experience,” without taking any steps to actually address the problem. That’s all the instructor keeps saying, and nothing is being resolved.

Hi sorry I’m new to using this.

So I’m a student studying electrical engineering. I’ve also been doing research in the field. However, I’ve been having a really hard time this semester with mental health problems, which combined with ADHD, has made it very difficult for me to be consistent with things, some days it’s difficult to get up, some days I’m waking up at 8 PM, etc.

So I’ve probably attended classes like 1/3 of the time. Despite this, I’ve been able to mostly keep up with homework and projects and have done alright on exams.

Ive recently gotten to a point where I’ve gotten more support for myself, and am doing a lot better, but now I feel like I’ve destroyed any hope of having a good relationship with my professors. As I feel like it’s really disrespectful to barely show up, and at the end of the day this is all my responsibility.

This a field I am really passionate about, and these professors are leaders in that field, so I have a lot of respect for them. Having gotten to a better place, I’m having a lot of fun really engaging with the material, and would like to discuss with professors and just have a good relationship in general, and for them to not think I just don’t care.

So my plan was go to office hours and explain. But I’m not sure how or what to say. Like what’s appropriate? Basically I want to express the sentiment that I care about this class, I’ve been having issues, I’m doing better now, and I plan to put a lot more energy into engaging with the class.

Is there a right way to do this? Does it even matter if I did or am I a lost cause? As a professor how would you feel/react?

Hi everyone, I’m applying for a lecturer position at an Australian university and I want to ask if there are any big differences in between Australia and the U.S. in terms of what’s expected in a cover letter. I’m from Australia but I did my PhD in the States (humanities, finished last year) and I’ve only ever applied to academic jobs in the US.

For R1 jobs in the States, the norm is 2 pages, starting with a description of research and then moving on to teaching. Do Australian universities expect the same or are the conventions different? Aussies tend to be a bit more casual and less intense than Americans, and I wouldn’t be surprised if what counts as standard academic self presentation in the US registers to Australians as obnoxiously hyper-professional overkill (obviously I’d like to avoid this lol). Advice from anyone who can speak to this would be great.

Thanks!

I got a second stage interview for a first level Research Assistant position at an institution that does social science research. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. This position requires a Bachelor's and a year of research experience as well. Main thing I'm concerned about is overqualification since I'm ABD. How could I address this if it comes up at all?

The honest answer is that I've done very poorly at all stages of graduate school - Only managed 1 project at a time, only created my own materials for two courses, got dropped by my first PhD advisor, didn't do well during my last summer internship at a top 10 children's hospital, and no publications. There's also been institutional issues where I'm doing my PhD as well, such as my stipend getting cut in half my third year before I ran out of funding in my 4th year (same tuition waiver thankfully, which paid off the rest of my PhD). Obviously, I can't say that though.

What are some ways I could reframe that it's appropriate given my skills and abilities? Also, how do I work on sounding more confident? I get told all the time that I lack confidence and I think I come across that way because I have to be deliberate with how I speak. Many say I talk really slow and I think that's a byproduct of my 3rd percentile processing speed.

Hi Professors,

I need advice from anyone who has already published a qualitative chapter in Emerald.

The book editor emailed me to get the Interview Release Form signed by the participants.

When I conducted the interviews, I got them to sign a form in a local language. Now does this mean I have to chase the participants again and request them to sign again?

Has anyone here done this before?
It has been a year since I conducted the interviews, I hope they are still alive. :(

If I took a good class with a good teacher what kind of stuff is actually helpful to put in their evaluations

Won’t give too much info so I don’t doxx myself, but I’m doing a research internship for a company, I have a supervisor who is a PhD student whose boss is the head of the company, and there’s other interns in my group. We have to summarize articles and their findings, and to me, it seems like one of the interns is just flat out using AI and not generating any of their own work.

There’s the em dashes, the first few words bolded in a bullet pointed series, things that very much seem like ChatGPT. I think I have pattern recognition skills, because I’ve used AI to study and explain concepts, and the way those concepts are explained are formatted the way this interns summaries are. I put it into an AI detector, and it showed up as 100% AI, and to see if my work showed up as AI generated falsely , I put in my work, and it said 0%. I also put some of my undergrad professors work into the detector to test it out (multiple professors), and there’s said 0% I know there’s debate on if AI detector tools are reliable.

Thing is, we are writing articles and I’m leading this project and I don’t think this intern is taking the time to actually write the articles. They lack personality (the articles about certain topics are supposed to be somewhat personable and engaging) and I worry that if this content gets posted onto the website, it’ll reflect on me somehow if this interns article is found to be AI generated.

I don’t know what to do. I may be wrong in my assumption, but I also worry about this company I’m doing my internship for posting AI-generated articles.

Greetings, I have a question, today in the class i was supposed to take a quiz eith lockdown browser which I did. It has mistakenly picked up that i tried to switch tab from my touchpad, i was not even touching it. I have subitted the quiz and went to my office, where i plugged my laptop to external monitor but I forgot to close the lockdoen browser. The quiz was submitted but it showed me a popup that that i have tried again to switch windows and that the instructor will be notified. The worst part is that i have not tried cheating and did not need to. Can i get honor coded for this?

So my professor that teaches drama had me do various task and assignments throughout the semester I submitted my writing work on Jan 22nd as well as Feb 14 which neither have gotten back until today April 1st 5PM to add to that I have not gotten any grade back from the course sense I started beginning of January till now. If he would have submitted the grade I had gotten earlier I would have dropped the class, as I took Drama mostly to boost my overall mark for the deans list and instead it is my lowest grade at the moment. And the real kicker is i have emailed him about it and have gotten no responses thus far, he also submitted that grade the final week before the course ends for the semester. I do not know how to go about this, is it my fault on some level.

Basically the title. I'm a good student, I have a 3.93 GPA in the third year of doing an Honours UG degree. That being said, this semester has been tough for me. I'm still doing well in all my courses, but I think I may tank a few of my grades on upcoming final papers. I really want to go to grad school to continue my education. Two of my professors are the hardest and meanest people I have ever met. We have no direction in their classes -- the final papers and exams in these two classes are a general topic outside of the material we've covered (E.g., one course is an advanced Plato seminar where the only direction for our final paper was "Pick a dialogue unrelated to the themes hitherto discussed in the seminar and write a 15-page paper on it"). That being said, I don't feel my usual confidence with the work I'm doing and am worried that I will not do my finals, despite currently having A-'s in both courses. I've already gone to office hours multiple times with the courses I'm worried about, though they were generally unhelpful. Right now, I feel like all the good grades I've gotten in the past 3 years have been matters of contingencies rather than reflecting my actual academic ability. My question is whether you, as esteemed scholars, have ever been in a similar position. Have you ever failed or bombed an exam or test? How do you cope with it and regain confidence?

Thanks