Communication with Professor

Here is a email that was sent to my math professor:

Dear Professor Ahlgren

My name is Shih-Hao Chien and I am in your 231 class.

I have a question about what I should do about the discussion class. I had originally signed up for the BD7 discussion class and I had started going to that session. However I later changed my schedule around and somehow ended up with the BD5 discussion class(I am not sure how). I had signed up for webassign later so I am in the BD5 section for webassign, however I had been going to the BD7 discussion class because I hadn't realized that my section was changed. I am wondering what I should do about this because it seems that I dont have any grades for any of the worksheets and only for one of the hw assignments. So what should I do?

Shih-Hao Chien

Computer Engineer Freshman

chien8@illinois.edu

His Reply:

Hello,

I just read both of your emails.

Your name is listed in the BD5 class, although no grades are recorded there.

If you have been attending BD7, then the TA for BD7 (Alex Duda) has a list of the grades for the work which you have turned in.

If you wish to attend BD7, then please

1) Switch sections through the university system (the math undergraduate office in 313 Altgeld Hall can provide any needed help).

2) email me and Alex Duda to tell me that you have made the switch

I will change your section in webassign when I hear back from you.

This should be done soon.

Best,

SA

Taking Initiative

My story for taking initiatives and expanding my network are short and simple because I am still waiting for return emails from the people I emailed to. So the first way I took initiative is through the way I am trying to submit my resume and my application for a Microsoft internship that I am hoping to apply for. So instead of only submitting it online, I wanted to contact someone who had done the internship in the past to ask them questions about how the internship would go and to see if I could get the contact information of some of the people who headed the project. Lucky for me I know plenty of people who have done Microsoft internships before who have made friends in the area that I was interested in. Unfortunately I have yet to get a response because I just thought of this idea just a day or two ago. The other thing that I did was get in contact with one of my old co-workers at an internship that I did a while back. I hadn't planned to use her as a reference in my resume however since she did know me quite well I thought that she would be an excellent reference.

Since I really don't have much in terms of initiative, I think the best way to follow up is to plan ahead for what I am going to do with my contacts. For the Microsoft thing, I think that I will try to see if I can develop a working relationship with the people who work on the stuff that I want to intern for. This way they would have a sense of who I am as a person, and if they like me and they want to to work on the internship, they could put in a good word so that I would have a better chance of getting the position that I want.