Just to give you a bit of background as to what I am talking about, here is a dissection of couple of mails which two first year Indian grad students here have received. Yes, barely first year grads, forget having a professorship or even a doctorate. Rest of the grads (including me) are all J and whining that they want these kinda mails too! :D
Stating the obvious, both these guys and probably more (Ref: this)
a. seem to be using some extensively standard format for their mails (reminds me of TOEFL :P)
b. are mailing authors of research papers in their interest areas (?) without even checking if the person is a prof!!!
c. are idiots
I happened to call and talk to one of these kids. I asked him if he applied to professor so and so. The guy isn't sure, his reply, "Yeah, I think so, I think I had sent him a mail". Next question, "What are your research interests?". Hesitated, perhaps trying to recall what he wrote in the mail and then gave a safe answer, "Umm. Signal Processing and Communications" !!! (For non-EEs, that's essentially everything under the sun!!) Then I told him that the person he thinks is a prof is just a grad student, followed by a long lecture on how his school seniors (and probably, Indians in general) are being ridiculed here because of his blunder.
True story! Moral? You know it! I don't want to sound too grandparentish repeating it. All I'll say is, use your brains!! You don't want your mail to appear on someone's facebook wall next day :D
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