Dear St. George’s,

I hope this message finds you well. In fact, I hope it finds you at all. The number of emails flooding our inboxes each day makes it nearly impossible to read all of them.

As St. George’s students, we are expected to read all of our emails, but I, for one, find it difficult to differentiate the important emails from the unimportant ones when there are so many flooding into my inbox. In one standout week, I received 36 emails from the school staff, teachers and administrators. Of those, only six actually related to me.

The rest of those emails related to topics that either don’t interest me or don’t apply to me at all like clubs I don’t belong to, sports I don’t play and the endless lost item emails (we get one of these on average every 1.75 days. I did the math). I’ve got news for you: if you lost a pair of white airpods, indistinguishable from everyone else’s, it’s hopeless.

On Jan.16, I, along with the rest of the school, received an email regarding the varsity boy’s locker room. I wasn’t there. Neither was the female population of the school (which is nearly 50% of all the students). In truth, that email was meant for such a specific group of people that it is truly baffling as to why it was sent to the entire school. However, this problem isn’t a one-time thing. Time and time again, there are emails where the person who sent it was clearly just lazy and sent it to the entire school. Nearly half of my inbox is taken up with emails that don’t have anything to do with me, and while I’m glad that I was notified about a sports meeting taking place a week from now, is it necessary to receive more emails on the matter later? I didn’t reply to the first email, so why would you think I’m interested?

And then there are the reply alls. Oh, the near-endless reply alls. For the congratulations emails specifically, I don’t intend this to nullify the message: I fully support and congratulate all of the St. George’s students who are doing amazing things. However, the students and faculty that reply to the email to congratulate the student(s) in question do not have to send that email to that entire school. It would make more sense to congratulate that student individually by sending them a personal email.

It would make more sense to send emails that ask students to respond if they are interested in receiving emails on specific subjects. Getting emails that don’t relate to me, along with the already plentiful emails from colleges, results in a swamped inbox for us students to check everyday.

There is a simple solution to our email troubles: figure out who is interested in your emails, then send all further information to only those people. It is very easy to create groups to send emails to. Also, just shorten emails, make them easy to read and straight to the point. Mr. Gibson does a great job of this when we have a snow day, only using 1-2 lines to inform us we don’t have school.

Staff and students alike should be more considerate towards the frequency of emails we receive.

Sincerely,
Jack Seigerman