By Haley Williams
My school email inbox is a wonderful place, where only the most important of mail goes. All of my social and promotional emails go to my personal inbox, so surely my beloved @andrew.cmu.edu address should be a calm and peaceful place, right? WRONG! I get approximately one million emails per day to my Carnegie Mellon address, despite being quite picky with where I give it out. I do my best to keep her as clean and organized as possible, unsubscribing from lists whenever possible. Even so, I am frequently bombarded with emails giving me semi-hourly Piazza updates and relaying Handshake messages from Egyptian princes.
Really, though. For any event happening on campus, you’re likely to receive no less than three emails: one email when the event is scheduled, a reminder email a few days before the event happens, and finally, a “last chance!” email for anyone who might’ve missed the first two. C’mon, man, leave me alone! I don’t want to go to a lecture about underwater basket weaving, and I still don’t after the second and third email. While I understand that the intention is to keep people informed, there has got to be a more efficient way.
Step one: consider, if you will, a world in which Carnegie Mellon sends out one email about an event. Step two: you click on a button to mark yourself interested, and now you have magically been added to a mailing list that reminds you of the upcoming event! Now, those who plan on attending the underwater basket weaving lecture won’t forget about it, and those who couldn’t care less aren’t being bombarded with emails. Step three: profit. I know, I know, I’m a visionary. Please, keep the praise to a dull roar, I need to be able to hear my inbox notifications in case someone asks how to spell their name on Piazza.
At its core, this isn’t even a Carnegie Mellon issue. Why does Piazza default to emailing me every 40 seconds? Why does Canvas send a separate email for every individual pen stroke of annotation the grader makes on my 34/75 homework? Do I really need an email AND a Canvas notification for every new announcement, assignment, and score released? Most importantly, why does Amy Burkert want to know what I think about generative AI so badly? Just leave me alone!
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