Tufts Blogs

Perhaps you’ve heard that diamonds are a girl’s best friend. But in college, that’s wrong. Your true ally lies in an inbox that ends with a @tufts.edu. If there’s one thing you need to keep on top of in college, it’s your email.

And this begins before you ever even set foot on campus. Your email delivers you everything you need for your life in college to run smoothly (or at least, as smooth as your first semester in college can really be): information about selecting a Pre-Orientation program, a daily schedule of Orientation Week events, your housing form, information about selecting an advisor, registering for classes, and so much more! 

In college, email will be the main form of communication with the school administration, professors, clubs, your RA, and more. This is true for almost everything, at least in the very beginning, unless arrangements are later made to move communications to text, Slack, etc. It is also how I find out about most events that are happening on campus! Tisch College and TUSC regularly host fantastic events that they send out information about to each student’s email. The weekly “Jumbo Digest” sent out by the Office of Student Life is also a great source of information to find out about events on campus and stay up-to-date on any announcements. And my favorite email… “Package received” from Mailroom@tufts.edu, alerting me that I can make my way down to collect my package! 

But receiving all these emails can be overwhelming too. Sometimes, I find that it can be difficult to filter out personal emails that require a reply from more general emails that don’t need immediate attention. A general rule of thumb I like to follow is to check my inbox at least once in the morning and once in the evening, clearing out emails I’ve read and don’t need, and flagging the ones that I might need to refer back to in the future. A neat feature I’ve discovered recently was that you can set a timed reminder to check back on an email or so you can reply when you have more time. But these small acts of daily maintenance will help you keep track of important emails and not let them pile up!

And lastly, I also encourage you to send out some emails of your own! One of the benefits of going to a smaller school like Tufts is how accessible everyone is. Though asking for help doesn’t come super easily to me, seeing how willing to help everyone is has made me much more comfortable with emailing my teachers with any questions I have, to set up a meeting, to ask about getting off a waitlist for a class, or even just to talk! Despite their busy schedules, every professor I’ve emailed has been more than timely with their responses and most get back to me within the day. Any person or department you want to get in contact with is just an email away!