Reply to Rant: Tell Kids to Stop Bugging Professors for Internships

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Reply to "Rant: Tell Kids to Stop Bugging Professors for Internships"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a professor and regularly get emails from high school students who ask for research internships.  They haven't finished high school, much less basic undergraduate courses in my field.  I don't know who encourages this, but obviously those kids didn't think up this idea independently.

[i]"Dear Professor X:

I am very interested in your work after reading [one of my obscure papers from a web search].  I would like to help you with research because I want to have a career [making a lot of money by doing something I know nothing about]."[/i]

This is insulting to their high school teachers, who have a lot to teach them.[/quote]

Blame the college admissions process fella! Talk to your peers/co-workers and have them change their stupid process. Colleges have questions along the lines of "Why XXX college?" and guess what, kids make up crap like "I love Crystal Meth Biology, love the work Professor Impatient is doing and would love to work in his lab. After lab, I want to grab late night pizza at Local Italianao's". Your idiot colleagues think the kid is genuine because he used a real prof's name and a real pizza place that is open late nights, and that the kid is really into your college. The kid does that for every college he applies to. Why are you now upset if the kid just follows the same playbook and contacts one of y'all in real life? You trained him after all..[/quote]

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