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Dealing with a micromanaging instructor, as a teaching assistant
I'm a teaching assistant at a US university for a calculus class. My major duties are to write worksheets and then grade them along with the homework.
I have been a TA long enough (5 years now) to understand the usual responsibilities of one. I have also worked with a variety of instructors with different working styles. All of this, is to say that my current instructor is severely micromanaging me. So far, I've managed to do all of the miscellaneous and often questionable as necessary tasks they've given me. But as the semester is progressing, they're continuing to give me additional tasks.
By way of example, they'd started questioning why I took a point from a students assignment. Now they also want me to write down a detailed rubric of how I grade an assignment, down to every possible scenario of how a student may lose a point.
There are other examples. Their tone of emails is very disrespectful and I get several emails a week (on top of a weekly meeting) of that nature. I've considered talking to my research advisor, but they've got a lot on their plate right now and so I would like to call on the vast experience of this community to help me with the following questions:

Am I allowed to use the word 'micromanage' in an email, or would it be considered unprofessional or inappropriate? I wish to let the instructor know that I would like to be treated like an adult.

Do math departments at US universities have some kind of support system for TAs? If a TA such as I is distressed with their instructor, who would they go talk to?

As a TA, am I allowed to say no to a task given by the instructor? Or must I do whatever they say?

Edit:
I. Clarification:
I am not unhappy that the instructor requires a rubric. Rubrics have always been created and used. They however, want me to write down in great detailed how many ways there are a student can get a problem incorrect, and how I'd mark them down. The point is, there are infinitely many ways and no rubric detailed enough can account for every contingency. I am also not unhappy that the instructor is handing me more tasks as the semester progresses. I am unhappy, however, that they're relinquishing many of the responsibilities of an instructor (that they started the semester, agreeing to do) onto me. This is creating logistical challenges for me (since we are not teaching in person). An earlier clarification that included a detail about the instructor has been removed, please keep it that way.
II. Update:
Thank you all for your comments and answers. I took the advice of approaching the instructor and the department chair (separately) and putting my concerns in front of them. I also spoke to fellow TAs who had worked with the instructor in the past. Following is a brief summary:

The instructor seem to not agree that their tone of communication with me had been disrespectful. I showed them some examples and explained my perspective and after a dialogue, they seem to cave in and indirectly admitted by saying that their language was a bit too harsh.

The instructor did not agree that they're passing their work onto me, so I decided to take it to the chair.

The chair agreed that many of the tasks I was performing were not to be handled by TAs. They told me they'd speak to the instructor.

Apparently, a couple TAs I spoke to, who've worked with them in the past, had similar experiences. They said they got into arguments with the instructor often.

III) Conclusion:
I'm grateful for a lot of good advice given to me here. The situation seems to have gotten a lot better with the instructor now and I hope to finish the semester on a positive note.

In most places the "chair of undergrad studies" would be a tenured faculty position. I know of a couple of exceptions, but, still, a regular, permanent or long term,  position held by an experienced educator.

Are you being paid for the extra time you spend performing these tasks, or is it something you are having to do beyond your contracted hours?

Might it be the case there have been complaints expressed by students to the instructor or chair about you, particularly your grading of their work? It would be good to get that out of the way first.

So, perhaps this is a bit harsh, but some of the answers and comments start with the assumption that either the Instructor or the TA is right. This is not only counterproductive to the actual situation, but also reinforces the idea that there is some sort of battle that must be fought for those in similar situations of this question. Please, take a moment and consider that you may not know who is in the right here, based on the limited information that has been provided to us.

Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes.

Out of curiosity, did the chair talking to the instructor have a positive effect? (This might not be answerable for a few weeks)

Don't you think micromanagement is meaningful/relevant/useful in one circumstance only, being where the manager doesn't know what's going on?
Consider a bar where a new boss micromanages everything in sight. Is that because he has no idea how to run a bar, or she knows what's what and wants to find out which staff are cheating?
Which d'you think applies here? The manager doesn't know, or the manager seeks to find out?

I'm not going to address your 3 points specifically, because I believe these are not the right questions to ask in your situation, and because two other posts have already replied to your specific concerns.
Rather, I think it is important to realize that there are multiple ways to organize the "staff" (i.e. all instructors, lecturers, TA's, etc. involved) of a course. Additionally, the teacher in charge usually has the freedom to choose a method of organization, and any "staff" member subordinate with respect to this course (including faculty members) should try to adapt towards it, as much as is reasonably possible.
It seems that the new person in charge of this course has a very different management style than your previous one. Please be aware that there are probably many reasons this instructor opts for a "micromanaging" style (relative to the style of the previous instructor), and that probably none of them have something to do with you. So please try and do not take it personally. For example, I think it is more likely that the tone of the emails is a result of the new instructor not liking the management style and organization of its predecessor, of which you are unfortunately one of the most visible components.
An analogy
Consider this analogy: You have been working in a factory for 5 years now, assembling widgets with your bare hands, and all is going well. Suddenly, you get a new boss. The first time you meet, she cries in disbelief when she sees you carrying widgets with your bare hands. Angrily, she orders you to start wearing gloves from now on, and inspect all widgets you produced for any fingerprints, and start wiping them off.
Does the new boss hate you? Unlikely, you just met for the first time. It is more likely she simply does not want fingerprints on the widgets, and overreacts to the situation. Does the new boss treat you like a child? No. She treats you like a subordinate, which you are. It is true that academic staff are usually given more freedom than factory workers, but teaching tends to require more organization and structure (depending on your educational styles), and thus often has a de facto "boss" as well.
What to do
I think you should try to talk to your instructor (or your research advisor) first (preferably face to face, or video chat), before doing anything else. (as a side-note, if you feel your advisor is not able to advise you on these matters, for whatever reason, consider contacting the relevant support people at your university to make sure you have at least someone to talk to. Yes, you have this site, but this is no substitute for an advisor!)
If you keep in mind what I've stated above, this conversation ought to bring some calm to the conflict between you and your instructor. One way you could start is by first mentioning that you feel overwhelmed by the requests of you instructor, and that you are having a hard time to adapt to their way of running this course. Then, you can explicitly ask for help in performing your duties to their expectation. The latter may give you more work than you're used to. However, not doing that would be insubordination, and only prolong your conflict. If, after talking to the instructor, you still believe their requests are unreasonable, then you may go to others and ask them to do something about it. However, be aware that the others may disagree with your whether the requests are unreasonable. Be open to the possibility that the previous instructor simply made things easy for you.

I think this is the correct answer.  OP is upset that they aren't being allowed to grade the students without supervision or accountability, and that simply isn't reasonable.  Every other instructor may have simply supported their grading without question, and that had led OP to consider that level of authority "natural", when it isn't.  At the end of the day, all delegated authority is contingent.

@tbrookside The OP was made completely in-charge of worksheets, which is a lot of work and not completely typical. I think they're complaining about the process. If the instructor had said "this isn't working out, I'm going to write the grading criteria from now on" or "we'll do it together in a meeting" I don't think there would be a problem.

@tbrookside depending on the class, having a detailed explanation of every possible reason to take off a point is maybe impossible and definitely a waste of time.

The amount of hours wasted on writing a microscopic rubric needs paid, and at some point it will exceed the allotted hours on the TA contract. The instructor should know that at that point, the work stops.

@tbrookside Well, there is degrees of supervision, control, and accountability as well. Which often changes. We used to trust student assistants (i.e. higher year bachelor/master students that do TA work) to neat leak the solutions of our graded homework assignments. However, thanks to an incident, we now no longer do that. I guess you mean to say that there is no such thing as a "natural" level of these aspects? If so, I agree.

@OwenReynolds That's a completely different discussion, though - and especially since OP already seems to be responsible for coming up with the work sheets, it seems entirely natural that coming up with the grading rubric would also be their task. Maybe this adds up to an unreasonable amount of work, and maybe it doesn't. In any way this does not seem to be what OP is upset about.

Thank you for the answer, it brought me great clarity. I apologize for not being able to actively participate in the discussion. I'll edit my question with an update that will bring this discussion to closure.

Am I allowed to use the word 'micromanage' in an email, or would it be considered unprofessional or inappropriate? I wish to let the instructor know that I would like to be treated like an adult.

I’d advise you against using that word. It’s a somewhat loaded term, might have a negative triggering effect, and besides, some supervisors might believe that micromanaging someone is actually a good thing in some circumstances.
I suggest instead that you focus on communicating in a jargon-free manner that given your experience you could be doing your job more effectively with less detailed instructions from the professor, and that this could save the professor’s time and energy as well.
As for “treated like an adult”, that sounds fairy hyperbolic to me. They may be treating you like a first year graduate student instead of a fifth year, but first years are still adults. When you discuss this with anyone at your department, tone down the hyperbole and stick to factual, emotionally neutral terms.

Do math departments at US universities have some kind of support system for TAs? If a TA such as I is distressed with their instructor, who would they go talk to?

That’s specific to your department but probably the graduate program coordinator, graduate program chair, or the graduate vice chair. In a smaller department it might be the department chair. At my department, all of the above people would be quite supportive and try to help you resolve the situation.

As a TA, am I allowed to say no to a task given by the instructor? Or must I do whatever they say?

Generally speaking a math department is like most hierarchical workplaces in the US, that is, people have supervisors who give them instructions, and they are expected to follow those instructions. However, it’s not like some kind of navy ship where disobeying an order will get you court-martialed (or, during wartime in certain historical times and places, summarily executed); if that were the case, there’d be a lot of dead TAs on my record…
In reality in professional workplaces where the employees are college-educated “knowledge workers” (a description that certainly includes math departments) it is understood that the supervisee is going to apply their own judgment to the situation and try to get the task they were given done in the best way as they understand it. So, while it is not considered appropriate to disobey a direct order, it is also not considered very appropriate for a supervisor to give a direct order that has extreme levels of specificity to it and takes away the autonomy of the supervisee to apply their professional skill and judgment to the situation. In such a situation it would not be inappropriate to at least try to reason with the professor. In reality, in my experience TAs often don’t do everything I tell them to do in the exact way I told them to do it, and somehow the world keeps spinning. But I’m a reasonable person, and your professor may not be.

Thank you for the answer. Indeed, not using passive aggressive language worked in my favor.

My guess is that students are asking the instructor about the worksheet grading. They assume the professor did it all, or that you graded using their criterion. The awkwardness when the instructor replies "uh, this -1 was for, uh, I'll have to get back to you" is the source of the problem.
The fix is for the instructor to tell the students about the arrangement. Maybe your instructor wants to check around, but having mere worksheets done by a grad TA (I assume), with close supervision, of course, seems fine. I got to write a few test Q's when I was a TA. Then work out whatever seems comfortable. For examples, maybe they want to look over the worksheets first (at one of these meetings). Maybe you talk a little about how in class they emphasize more X when the book covers more Y, so the worksheet should also be more on X; you're using the terminology the students are hearing in class, and so on. A rubric is a pretty simple thing: "Part I: 5pts, Part-II: 4pts general approach & most steps, 4pts details; several minor mistakes (overall) -1".
The goal is students coming to you, not them, to whine about worksheet points (during your well-publicized office hours), and many fewer students appealing to the instructor, who is now not blind-sided by a worksheet Q they've never seen before. My guess is your instructor asks less and less about the worksheets as fewer and fewer students ask them about it. If they wanted to really get involved in the worksheets they wouldn't have given you the job.
As far as duties, TA's tend to be paid on a basis of 20 hours/week. Generally this will be roughly laid out -- 4 hours grading homework, 1 hour meeting, 3 hours in class, 6 hours office ... . And, of course, TA's are firstly students -- unlike other part-time jobs, TA-ing is educational and less disruptive to your schoolwork. That's what we say, anyway.  Your best defense against too much work is letting the instructor know how the extra time past 20 hours is cutting into your studies. Having your TA flunk the semester doesn't look good.

There seems to not have been any concerns from the students about my grading. My rubrics, like you've explained, are indeed clear and accurate. I have not had any problems in the past. I've also seen the rubrics created by more experienced TAs and faculty and mine seems quite reasonable. Thanks for the answer.

@tangentbundle Huh. It seems like something must have happened to go from "here, you handle it all -- I don't have time" to "now I want to get involved".

Taking your questions in reverse order: As a TA it is very unlikely that you have any independent authority at all. The course is assigned to the professor who is responsible for it and for managing any support staff. There are likely rules on what it is appropriate for them to require and certainly limits on the time you are required to work.
At some institutions the TAs might have a union or a support organization, and students normally have somewhere they can appeal to.
You can say "micromanage" or any other terms you like and whether they are unprofessional or not, if you push people's buttons, especially intentionally, then it probably works against you. It is also possible that the "disrespect" you are feeling is a reaction to your own actions. You seem very angry, both in the question and in a comment. Projecting that does you no good.
You resent being given additional tasks, it seems. But some would interpret that as being given additional responsibility, which is part of the learning process.
Five years experience doesn't make you an expert. Sorry.
But, your research advisor is probably a good person to talk to. Ask if your complaints are valid. Ask if others have complained. A local source is more valuable than anyone here (myself included) since there are details you can share there, but not here. You say the tasks are "questionable" but we can't judge that.

Thanks for the answer but you misunderstand, I meant 5 years experience as a TA. I'm not claiming to be an expert educator.

I think Buffy meant an expert in being a TA.

To play devil's advocate, how many more years of experience being a TA do people realistically have than 5? The question author sounds to be nearing the reasonable experience limit of a TA.

A detailed rubric on grading, is the wrong way to do it.  It may seem useful, for someone who wants a "dumb" person (or a robot) to do grading. An intelligent person can do much better.
When you have a detailed rubric, you're stuck with it – which is bad. Specify every way a student may loose a point? Well, they always invent new ways of doing an exercise badly. And when the new error isn't on that detailed list, you can't take a point for it. This is why the detailed spec doesn't work. You end up giving an A on something mediocre, because "this isn't on the list of what they can loose points for".
It is ok that they ask why you deducted points. They must do the occational check to see that you do your job properly. And perhaps they're following up a complaint. Of course, the complaint may be bogus. Students occationally complain in the hope that a complaint alone will improve their grade.
They should not go for a detailed rubric in order to cover their asses or whatever. Next thing, they publish that list, and students will then complain "yes, this is an error. But it is not on the list, so I demand an A as is my right..."  With a detailed spec, you get "lawyers" arguing.
So, the spec should simply be:
Read the students work. Deduct points for anything that is wrong, missing or otherwise bad. (Infinite list, cannot be specified!)
Or the other way: Read the students work. Grant points for correct complete answers...
Math people often go for a detailed approach to grading, because it is to some extent possible with math exercises. But this is not the only way. A math test can be graded using the same approach as when grading an essay: "Read the whole thing, get a feel for how good they are." Grades set this way can be harder to argue about. But they capture phenomena such as: "Student had all the correct answers, but clearly don't know the best way to get at them. Bad intuition, laborious and roundabout methods..."  Being good at math, is much more than coming up with a correct answer.  Good education should appreciate that. An exercise/test consisting of a series of problems where one awards "points" in a strict way, is not a good way to grade. It may be useful because it is quick and easy to do with a large class.  But it shouldn't be the only approach to grading, and certainly not made progressively stricter every year.

From a college professor who has supervised TAs.

Rubrics are fundamental for "assessment of learning". Your supervisor may have to demonstrate whether they are closing the loop on institutional objects required for accreditation. Rubrics demonstrate that learning objectives are being assessed. So, try to also think from the point of view of the supervisor who has their own goals that they need to meet.
This does NOT absolve them of using a disparaging tone.
Whatever you do, don't burn bridges. Like all professions, this can be a really small world.

Good luck!

Thank you for the very concise yet helpful answer. Not burning bridges is indeed wise advice.

LEAVE
The usual failing of someone in an academic position is typically too much of a laissez faire attitude viz-a-viz teaching. Someone erring on the opposite side of the scale is unlikely to see their failing - nay they are probably going to consider themselves virtuous for lavishing attention on minute aspects of how their course is delivered. They don't trust anyone to do as good a job as themselves. It is clear that you are unlikely to meet their exacting standards. Complaining about their management would be interpreted as you attempting to shirk responsibility. The fact that the work being loaded on you may be meaningless is not the issue.
While we could talk about the pedagogical pros and cons of this style of management, it's not actually relevant to the question. I cannot realistically see any scenario where you could make the fundamentals changes to the management style that you require. This is probably multifaceted for you. Teaching is pretty labor intensive at the best of times. Pointless busywork will make the nominal task grow exponentially in terms of time cost. Unless there is a requirement not stated in the question it will certainly not be worth it from a monetary point of view. It almost certainly not be worth it either from the perspective of reputation as you are already being treated as an underling, and remaining in this position will likely cement that perception, at least in the instructor's eyes. If you are asking this question here, you are probably close to saying something about the way in which you are being managed, which is more likely to sour the relationship rather than establish the firm boundaries that you are seeking.

You appear to know quite a bit about this instructor. If I may ask, how likely do you think your description is accurate, and on what parts of the question do you base your assessment of the instructor? Also, is the adaptation truly as terrible as you describe? This does not correspond with my personal experience of changing management styles as a TA, at least.

@Discretelizard I have worked as a TA a lot, and I have worked as someone who has hired TAs. Someone who intercedes between the TA and their task is one that is an asshole to work for. It can sometimes be tempting to do it when in a senior position, but it screams that you do not trust the people you have hired. If someone is a good TA, they are a good TA, and if they're not, no degree of micromanagement will make them a good one. The best intructors I had knew when to manage and when to stand back. The ones that didn't ended up endlessly rearranging deck chairs on their sinking ship.

Hmm, well, of course there is a time and place for more or less management. I'm just not so sure this particular scenario cannot be a place for more management. You say that the instructor gets between the TA and their task, but it seems to me that the instructor is changing the task the TA should perform, and provide (perhaps too much, I cannot tell) feedback when the new task has not been performed in the way they liked. (or they realised the TA actually should have been doing something slightly different from what they asked...)

I understand the frustration and I'm sorry your labor was unappreciated by your colleagues/superiors, @Stumbler. I do agree, the job of a TA is not very rewarding and sometimes, quite demeaning.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but generally speaking the way to make sure you are treated as an adult is to convince people that you are an adult who should be treated as such. Part of this is competence — the ability to successfully complete tasks, which you have no problem with — but a larger part is confidence and self-assertiveness. On a purely psychological level, you need to present yourself to this professor as an equal (a colleague, not a student) until s/he wakes up and sees you as such.
A good first step would be to set up a face-to-face appointment, and begin it (after the pleasantries) by saying" I'm getting the sense that you don't trust or respect my work, and I wanted to talk to you about that." When asked why you say that — which is the likely next move — calmly and factually explain that s/he has been loading you with trivial tasks, double-checking what you do, and speaking dismissively to you. Have examples ready-to-hand to show what you mean, and keep emotion out of it (even if s/he starts to get irked). Then talk it out: negotiate...
Your workload probably won't drop much — you're being paid to do what this professor tells you to do, after all — but it should change his/her attitude to give you more leeway, independence, and courtesy. You may discover, for instance, that the last TA for this class was a complete tool, or that the professor is under some kind of pressure from the department or students. Keep in mind that a small cohort of undergrads believes the road to better grades lies in complaining about TAs to professors, and complaining about professors to the department. Such students are a PitA (Pain in the A...), but their parents pay the school's bills.
The key here is to ask for what you want — this being a measure of consideration and mutual regard — from the state of mind that you have a right to receive it, and any reasonable person would naturally give it to you. When that becomes true, then you are being treated like an adult, because you've become an adult in other people's eyes.

This sounds like a bad plan if the instructor has been making demands that would be considered reasonable by a (knowledgeable) third party. I strongly suggest talking to such a third party before trying this approach.

@Discretelizard: I disagree, mainly because I find it ridiculous to delegate psychology to bureaucracy. This is an interpersonal problem having to do with the feelings and desires of the TA, and at some point each of us needs to stand up for our own feelings and desires. Adding a third party merely complicates an already complex psychosocial interaction. If a direct discussion goes badly one can always turn to a third party, sure; but depending on a third party from the get-go does not do much to project an independent, respectable persona.

Except the TA is decidedly not an equal to a professor. A TA is a subordinate and should act as such. This doesn’t give the professor the right to treat them badly, but if the TA fails to acknowledge the real power difference between themselves and the professor, any attempt to address the bad behavior is likely to backfire.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I'm fascinated that this answer suggesting open and direct communication was received so poorly...

@Andrew: Honestly, I was expecting pushback, particularly from established academics, since this runs against some of the harsher norms and traditions of university life. But I wasn't expecting this much pushback. It might make a very interesting study...

I left academia recently and I have to say... the further away from it I get, the happier I am I left...


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Should I add figures to my Statement of Purpose for PhD in STEM?
Is it a good idea to include descriptive figures/diagrams from previous poster presentations and publications in a statement of purpose?

You have the wrong idea about the SoP. It isn't a survey of your past work. That is for the CV.
The SoP needs to be forward looking, dealing with your goals and plans for the future, both in a degree program and thereafter. Brief statements (phrases, not sentences) about things you have done in the past that support the likelihood of attaining those goals can be ok.
Focus on what you want to study, some sub-field perhaps. Say what your after-degree plans are.
If you just recapitulate the CV, then you are wasting an opportunity.

Just because the figure is "from [a] previous poster [presentation]" doesn't mean it's violating the goals of an SoP necessarily, I can think of a nice graph with a big gap that I'm basically orienting my research around. I upvoted, but how do you feel about including figures/diagrams, assuming they serve the purpose of the SoP?

@AzorAhai-him-, not a problem, except that an SoP is normally limited in length. But it would need a very high priority compared to other possible things, and strongly support the future. Another, unstated, problem with the SoP is that it can't be so specific that you rule out any possibility of getting an advisor at the place you apply to. So, projecting a bit of flexibility is also good.

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Non-traditional path: How should I include/omit a study abroad experience?
I am currently a master's student planning to apply to US universities for PhD in engineering.
I has been more than 5 years since I graduated from my undergraduate institution.
The thing is, it took me 7 years to get my 4-year STEM degree, and I spent a year of it at a top-10 US university as an exchange student. But, it was a bad year and I don't have it on my transcript. So, it is like a year of my academic life does not exist in my transcript. Let's say it jumps from spring 2011 to fall 2012 on my transcript, but there is no mention of anything of my studies abroad.
It is been almost 10 years since this failed year of studying abroad. Should I include it? Omit it? I do not want to hide anything but I also do not want to include things that could hurt my application.

In the U.S., most applications for grad programs explicitly require accounts of all prior education experience post-high-school. You can get an official "transcript" from that institution, and this would surely be necessary for any applications. If you try to hide things, it can turn into a disaster for you.

As Paul Garrett says, if you are required to include all post-secondary transcripts than you must include it.
However, many students perform poorly at the beginning of their university studies, and what we mainly care about in graduate admissions is students' recent performance, so I don't think you should worry about it too much.  (There are several questions about such situations on this site: e.g., search for something like "poor undergraduate".)

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What are the expectations (if any) for time between students' replies to professors' emails?
I am an undergrad student who has recently taken a course under a professor. I sent him an email last Thursday for confirmation that I will be allowed to register for his course (it has not started yet).
I did not receive a reply for the next two days, but did not find anything amiss in that, since professors do take their time while responding to emails, and the weekend was approaching.
I received a reply three days later on Sunday night with a positive response and some general information about the course and the first class. About 10 minutes later, I received another email as a correction to the first response.
I did see both the emails on my phone late in the night since I can access GMail on it, but I didn't respond yet at the time, since emails typed on the phone seem to have weird formatting at times. So, I decided to respond to the email the next day (today, Monday) on my laptop once my classes are done (this particular class hasn't begun yet).
But today afternoon, I received a rather curt email from the Professor asking me why I haven't responded yet and if I am still interested in taking his class (I very much am).
This surprised me since it hasn't even been 24 hours since his last email and the course does not begin until 2 days from now.
I know I should have responded from my phone right when I saw his response last night, formatting issues notwithstanding, and I do tend to procrastinate answering emails, so that is my mistake. But I did not think it would be a big deal.
Of course, now my course of action is to just apologize, but I would like to know if this was an outlier or the standard in academia.
I know that it is common to wait a few days before expecting a response from a professor, but is there a standard regarding student replies to a professor?
If it matters, I am from a country in Asia.

Was there any reason why the professor was expecting a response at all (other than maybe a thanks)? Was there some information he needed immediately from you?

@GoodDeeds Apart from thanks and a general acknowledgement that I read his email, he wasn't expecting anything. There was no question or anything.

"I received a rather curt email" How sure are you about that? How explicitly was the professor saying that he was unhappy?

@Snijderfrey I'd rather not give too much away in case the prof finds this (arguably there's already a lot of info here), but you can take my word for the fact that he sounded irritated in the email.

"I know I should have responded from my phone right when I saw his response last night" No, you shouldn't have. No professor expects students to answer emails late in the night on a Sunday night.

There are maybe cultural & disciplinary differences, but personally I never expect a student to reply outside of normal working hours (9-5ish), and I also tell my students not to expect a reply from me outside of those hours.
It's unclear whether your request was time sensitive (Was there a waiting list for the class? Were other students waiting to hear if there was a spot for them?). If it was, then I would have expected a response on Monday morning. If not, then I think a response within 24-48hrs would have been absolutely fine. Finally, if the professor did expect a quick response, then they really should have said this in the email to avoid confusion.

Thanks for the answer. About the time-sensitivity, I don't really know if there was one because he didn't mention any. One situation I can imagine is registering me for the course on Moodle, but the class doesn't start until 2 days, so I don't know. regarding the waiting list, I would be very surprise if that was the case, since the course is from a small department in the university, and the very reason I had to email him for confirmation is because undergrad students aren't affiliated to this department, so undergrads taking this course is rare.

@user147417 Two days is not exactly a long time before the course starts. The professor might have had some free time just then allowing him to do some organizational stuff.

@Snijderfrey I think you could be right about this, my fault that I hadn't considered this.

@user147417 Two days is a very short amount of time before the class starts. Indeed, it probably already "started" this week, and is only scheduled for Wednesday (if I'm reading right). In short, your prof probably needed to add you and was worried he might not have time or see your email if you waited any longer to reply. You don't need to keep apologizing for everything, but in this case, yes, they were probably anticipating a prompt reply.

It's easy for someone who has been in the university system for a long time to forget students don't know all the ins and outs.


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How to start working independently in a project?
It has been two months since I joined in this new project. I have put to work along with another postdoc researcher. Now we both have been asked to set a pipeline for sequencing analysis. This person whom I have to work is like 20 yrs older than me and have gained some experience in the field. I respect his knowledge and experience. But, he gets tensed and sometimes doesn't talk or let me know on what he is working. He lets me know latter about things he has been doing. It also gets stressfull when I have to tell each step of my work. He keeps checking every detail and lot of time goes wasted. He is sometimes very slow. I like to be professional and also work in peace. I also like to get his advice and suggestions in some of the steps. How do I set boundaries without touching his ego, so that project work doesn't become affected? I am thinking to have digital lab book where I can update what I have been working on. So he can know the steps that I have been working on. Please someone advice

what you're describing isn't a team, it's you working for them.  you need the person who directs both of you to get involved.

@Tiger Guy We both report about the current status of the project to the lab head. We both work together to set the lab pipeline. Lab head doesn't have any background on the computational work,so very unlikely to be involved. But there is another person associated with this lab for many years and he works remotely. He gives some inputs on this kind of computational work and he seem to be interested in helping with pipeline.  The person (with whom I have problem ) shares less information with this person working remotely.

What level are you, there is a very big difference in expectations for a masters student verse another postdoc.


text:
How to explain thesis topic/advisor change during masters?
I changed my master's advisor after working on a thesis topic for several months. Then, even though I liked the research domain (computational study), I felt the project was all over the place and I simply lost my faith in my advisor.
I found a more suitable advisor on an experimental project.
How do I address this issue? I am interested in computational work for PhD, and I am worried about how it would look when I changed from a computational project to experimental in the masters.
Would it help if I had computational experience in the undergradute?

What is wrong with explaining it like you did here?

Tell him how you feel, in the end the one putting effort is you and not him.


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What are legitimate reasons for students to use their personal, rather than university, email accounts?
I'm affiliated with one British and one American university. Both mandate students to email from their university email accounts. Some students don't. When I emailed them to ask why, one student replied

I need to use my personal, rather than university, email account because of personal issues.

I don't want to ferret out what this student's "personal issues" are — I am upholding privacy and confidentiality. I'm just asking this — at large and out of curiosity. What rightful reasons can prevent a student from using a university email, but not @gmail.com? Thank you.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

My clarifying question was moved to chat, but I think it's still relevant, are these students undergrads in a class you're teaching, or supervisees/grad students?

Can you clarify what this "mandate" covers? Are students expected to send personal messages to their family from their university account, and penalized if they use their personal account for that instead? (I'm guessing not, and I'm guessing that you're discussing not if there exists any type of message for which a student might have a reason for wanting to use a personal account, but why they would want to use it for a certain specific type of message.)

@cjs Exactly. Universities in Western democracies can (obviously) only mandate use of the university email for university communication. The reason is likely assurance of delivery: It is trivial to whitelist email incoming to faculty and administration that is originating from the university server; and the university can verify that official email addressed to the students has been successfully delivered. Both directions are important for official notifications like exam dates and other organizational notices.

You say "I don't want to ferret out what this student's "personal issues" are". You mean, you don't want to ask them? If you really think the matter could be sensitive you could refer them to a neutral third party in administration to discuss it with, who would agree to keeping it strictly confidential. So if they are trans or depressed or don't have arms or are in love with you they don't have to disclose it to you as someone they have to personally interact with in the future. But in general I would not let anybody use nondescript "personal issues" as carte blanche.

I visited several Institutions with quite ridiculous terms of usage, which needed to be accepted. Even if these terms are sometimes quite obviously not enforceable in the strictest interpretation, it might make someone feel uncomfortable. So some paragraphs of these could play a big role in not wanting to use the provided account.

One possible reason a student may prefer to use a third-party email service is that the university has control over the university email account - something that might prove important if there is ever a legal dispute. I have read of cases where a student faces accusations and is expelled, and then finds it extremely difficult to challenge the ruling because they have suddenly lost all access to and control over the evidence proving their innocence. Worse, an unethical university (or  more likely, unethical staff working for the university) could delete or falsify the evidence.
Using an external independent email provider ensures that the university has no control over the records of what was said by who and when. For an honest university, that's beneficial too, as it also prevents students falsely claiming the evidence was tampered with.
Another reason is that students may be particularly concerned to keep their professional and private lives separate. If other students know and routinely use their university email address, they may accidentally use it for discussions about private matters the student does not want the university to have access to. There are lots of legitimate reasons for that - information about relationships, family matters, medical and financial issues are deeply personal. And some may be concerned about widespread prejudice against their politics, sexuality, religion, hobbies, etc. And again, in case of a dispute, such private material could be dug up and used as a weapon for character-assassination.
Foreign students may have grown up in totalitarian states and may as a result be particularly nervous about authorities with power over their lives also having control over their online presence or access to their emails. They may even have dissident opinions, or be doing things that would put them in real danger if their home country ever found out (e.g. Afghan girls/Christians or Chinese Uighurs studying in the West), and so be particularly careful about anyone having control over or visibility of their email account.
Another possibility is the complexity of administering multiple accounts. You have to remember more passwords, you have to change them more often, you have to remember to back up both accounts, you have to curate and transfer address lists, you have to remember which account you are holding which conversations on, and so on. If you have moved on from school to college to university to post-grad, you may be tired of having to change accounts and set everything up again every time you move institutions. Or maybe you find you can't remember lots of long/complex passwords, but the university system insists. It may be simply a desire to avoid the stress and effort. It may be the comfort of habit and familiarity with your own long-time email account.
There are plenty of public figures whose private lives the press and papparazzi would love to pry into. And there have been many cases of unethical reporters hacking phones or bribing IT people to leak data. So it has become routine to have multiple unofficial accounts known only to friends and colleagues, and only use the official, easily identifiable ones for PR statements and marketing. I don't know if any of your students are related to the famous, famous themselves, or plan to be, but they might be.
Or maybe they just don't like being given arbitrary orders about who to entrust their personal data to? In the modern world of hackers and data breaches, young people are getting more wary and privacy-savvy, and maybe trust the security at a big organisation like Google over the overworked IT staff at a small provincial university. I'm not saying they're necessarily right to do so - just that some people might think that way.

Even worse, many university email accounts have extremely poor security. I wouldn't want to use them, and security consciousness might count as "personal reasons".

"Another reason is that students may be particularly concerned to keep their professional and private lives separate." This paragraph appears to be an argument in favour of using the university email for university matters and the personal email for personal matters, which is exactly the opposite of what the question is asking. Here, the student insists on using their personal email for university matters.

Most of your answer seems mostly solved by simple "set up forwarding to the private mail and use private mail except when required otherwise". It isn't like you are sending that many mails to professors (I hope). The remaining bit of too many passwords changing too often is solved by the password manager.

@ZizyArcher auto-forwarding probably isn't available in systems that tie you in like this.  It's often disabled in the webmail interface, and doing it client-side in a real mail client requires getting a client working (not necessarily easy) then having that client running at the right time.  Then you have to be careful which account you reply from

One doesn't need mail forwarding, one can just download and archive one's emails.

From personal experience, universities can and will read the emails in your student account if you, or someone you are involved with, have a dispute with the university. As a consequence, I no longer use my (old) student email, which used to be the primary email on my publications.

@geometrikal That (and in general, the line "discussions about private matters the student does not want the university to have access to.") doesn't seem to apply here, since they're e-mailing someone else who is using a university account. So the university has access to it that way anyway.

Some universities also use fairly mediocre email solutions that are a pain to use.

In addition to the many reasons you've suggested, university mailboxes are often limited to very small sizes that require frequent deletion of old e-mails, which is annoying to those of us accustomed to services like Gmail who are storing decade-old e-mail with no problem.

Even as a practicing academic, I use my personal email as the first email listed in my publications and for all correspondence with academic journals (though I use my university email for most other things).  The main reason for this is that you might change universities over the course of a career, and it is nice to have your important academic emails in a single place.  By advertising an enduring personal email, you are easier to contact in the future if you change institutions.  Also, it can be difficult to get access back to a university email account when you are no longer at that institution, so backups (or original copies) of important emails on a personal account is often desireable (though there are also other methods to mass-backup emails).  There are probably other reasons that use of the university email might be inconvenient.
Getting to the substance of your problem, some universities have rules that students must use their university email for certain purposes, and they would require permission/waiver to ignore those rules.  So if the proposal by the student is outside the rules of your university (check the details of those rules first, because it would be unusual to require students to send all emails from the university account) then you certainly have the prerogative to let them know that their request is insufficient.  As with any special consideration request, the student will need to do more than just cite "personal reasons".  Usually they will have to give details on the personal reasons at issue (which are of course treated in confidence) and make a request for exemption.
My understanding is that the main (legitimate) reasons that universities want students to use the university email is that they don't have to worry about things getting lost with spam filters, and they can limit vulnerability to cyber-attacks.  The cynical part of me says that the other main (illegitimate) reason is the standard desire of large institutions to engage in totalitarian control, micromanagement and empire-building for everything touching their domain.  In any case, it may be possible to make an individual exception for a student by having them email all relevant lecturers, so that you can each add that personal email account to bypass your spam filters.

I imagine that the legitimate reasons have much more to do with limiting vulnerability to ransom ware/phishing/social engineering attacks than simply limiting spam. Adding outside emails to safe lists does little to alleviate these concerns, given the ease of spoofing an e-mail address.

@mmeent: Thanks, I have edited the answer accordingly.

I've read the argument that one wants to access old mails and that might be difficult when the account is suspended now a few times in comments and prominently here and it really surprises me. How did the knowledge that you can easily backup and move emails from one account to another on your local machine get lost? As a basic rule important data should not be stored solely in a single place managed by a 3rd party. Now, one might consider personal email accounts as hired backup, but then the natural approach would be to forward or copy mails there not to use that as single point of failure.

Just putting this here as a hint to people that end up on this question while looking whether that argument is a valid reason to insist on using a private mail address. Feel free to incorporate into the answer if you think it would benefit readers to at least acknowledge other options. (Obviously one might still prefer to fully trust a company to keep everything safe in one place... personal choices and such... but emails can be transferred quite easily with an email client and forwarding rules exist)

I would think the main legitimate reason for universities to want students to use their university email accounts is authentication: staff can reasonably know that an email from Student.Name123@institution.ac.uk is from Student Name, whereas they can't easily know or confirm who somememename@example.com is.

@kaya3 very likely this is at least a main reason. Which also means Ben's use-case is different from a student's. As Ben basically certifies the correctness of the private mail as primary contact for the papers by explicitly providing it on the paper itself. Therefore the identification argument doesn't apply to him, but does to students. Which obviously doesn't invalidate the argument as to why they might want to use the private mail, it's just an important distinction between both usage scenarios.

@FrankHopkins My problem is not doing a backup of the mail in the old account (which I do), but having people sending important emails to old accounts and having them silently dropped by the system ( yeah, a good email system wouldn't do that - yeah, that happens anyway). I actually missed important emails by collaborators due to this (they hit "reply all" to an old email...).

@FrankHopkins: These are good points you raise.  I've edited the first paragraph of my answer to reflect some of the points you raised.

One reason for such rules is that someone could easily pretend to be a student by creating an email account and use it to get confidential information from an instructor or other university official.  e.g.
John.Doe@gmail.com writes
Hi professor Smith.  What is my current average in Calculus?
vs.
John.Doe@myuniversity.edu writes
Hi professor Smith.  What is my current average in Calculus?
If I receive the first email, I’ll reply and tell them to resend from their university email account.
There's no reason that I can think of that a student couldn't make use of the university email system as they are required to do.

This one's a good point, although you can just reply to their university email address if you know it.

This does not answer the question (while it infers that fraud may be a reason, remember that the OP asked for legitimate reasons)

This is answering a completely different question, which is the reason for the university rule. They asked why students would choose to violate the rule.

@LamarLatrell Since when did all students (or even non-students) regard "fraud" as illegitimate? For some, "legitimate" means "whatever you can do without being caught and punished."

@alephzero You've asked a tricky question for me to answer with any certainty. I just didn't think of the 'some' that you refer to, and took a stab that the OP meant 'conforming to the law or to rules' when they used the word legitimate. (my bad)

Respectfully, I don't think that "someone pretending to be a student by creating an email account and using it to get confidential information" is a legitimate reason in this context. The definitions of "legitimate" and "rightful" that allow for what is essentially identity theft are almost certainly unhelpful. Not all students consider that illegitimate, but OP almost certainly does.

@alephzero I don't know how serious you were being, but if that was said as a real challenge, I have to say I don't agree.

@darijgrinberg that takes more effort though - fine for one or two students perhaps from a tutor group, another if large numbers start doing that.  Then if you make a slight mistake (perhaps JSmith4357456454765478@gmail is John Smith, you also have a Jane Smith, and you email the wrong one) the mistake could be serious

It’s completely legitimate for a student to prefer to use a personal email over an institutional email. Everyone has preferences, and we all know that IT policies can be a drag. But preferring something does not make it “legitimate” to violate a policy or claim a “need”. Especially since, as others have explained, these policies exist for some very good reasons, e.g., related to FERPA and protecting student privacy.
As for an actual legitimate need, the only one I can think of would be a student who has accessibility needs that are not met by their institution’s email infrastructure. E.g., if the student uses a screen reader or other assistive technology that works significantly better with a non-institutional email client, I would consider it legitimate for them to consider their accessibility needs as overriding the institutional policy, both as a matter of law (at least in the US and other countries with legislation similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act) and ethics.
Other than that, I can’t think of a legitimate personal need. But this could be due to my limited imagination, so I’m willing to keep an open mind that there may be others.

I upvoted, but I suspect if the ADA (or equivalent legislation in other countries) has implications for this policy, the implication would be that a university which provides an email service to its students is required to make it accessible to all students, just as every other service the university provides to students must be accessible. So allowing the use of a personal email account instead for a disabled student would only be a short-term, stopgap measure.

@kaya3 but there is a big gap between "usable" and "comfortable". While the universities system might barely meet requirements to be labeled "accessible" it can still be a burden to certain users.

I have never encountered a "legit" reason. Most people are just used to certain email clients, don't know how to merge another account on their current client, or are just lazy.
There are good reasons to maintain certain emails internal. Some sensitive things can't be sent to external addresses. For example, if a student has a disciplinary issue, I believe I have to let them know on their institutional account. In addition, some services (e.g. Moodle/Zoom/Blackboard) may limit their access to institutional accounts only, and for good reason: you don't want random people spamming your class/Zoombombing your lectures.
I suggest you highlight these issues to the student, and make sure that you don't break any university policies by letting them use their personal account.

I doubt most university email accounts are "mergeable"; mine doesn't support forwarding. And it's not a matter of laziness. When the UI for the university email doesn't show you (the titles of) more than 7 threads at a time, you'll soon discover that there are some advantages to Gmail (and lots of other providers).

The disciplinary issues are non-issues, too: You can always communicate to the student's university email, but why should the student always use his university email to communicate? It's them whose privacy is at stake (and a low stake it usually is). Zoom is equally irrelevant to this. The only real reason why students should write from internal accounts is to ensure that the mail doesn't get spam-filtered and the links in it don't get mangled by safelinks-like "services".

Only communicating disciplinary topics over university email is an utterly backwards practice, just like HR wanting to communicate only over employer email system. It makes it so the content of the mail is held/controlled by one party in the dispute, may be altered or deleted by that party, and may become inaccessible to the other party. This kind of email should always be sent to the address the student or employee requested you use to contact them for non-academic/non-work matters, not the "in-band" address.

Life circumstances made me attend five different institutions in three different countries. In all cases there was a forwarding/config option with Gmail/Outlook. I realize that this is anecdotal but still, it’s surprising that your experience is so different.

See also: Nullius in Verba's answer.

This answer seems to assume that everyone must be trained in IT.  "...merge another account on their current client" is gobbledegoook for people who are not so trained, so saying that not knowing how to do this is an "illegitimate" reason is crazily-Elitist.

@Spark Just to counter that anecdote with another, I’ve worked for an institute that explicitly blocked email forwarding. The reason was presumably that the institute handled human patient data, but the policy was still heavy-handed and caused no little inconvenience.

@darij grinberg would be sensible suggestion if universities didn't seem to still spam their own emails as well. The best example i had was my universities sending out information on how to avoid phishing attacks, being flagged as a phishing attack itself. God I hate safelinks "lets make it so the only way to know where an url points to is by clicking it".

@Rob or set up Thunderbird as a mail client: it gives you the choice if going to safelinks or the real URL.

Minor but actual example:  Corporate e-mail long ago messed up the language handling and would always serve the pages in the language the machine was set for.  What happens when you're trying to check your e-mail while using a machine in a country where English isn't the primary language??  I'm married to a foreigner.

I found that university email accounts are usually horrible without an excuse.

As a student, I couldn't forward mine because of HIPAA concerns.

I'm assuming the question is specifically about students using personal email accounts to correspond with university staff.
When students enrol at a university, they agree to abide by a code of conduct, student agreement, or whatever other official policy document sets out such expectations of students. If the code of conduct at your university says that students should use their university email account for all email correspondence with university staff, then the only legitimate reasons for not doing so are those set out in that code of conduct. I suspect that at almost all universities with such a policy, no exceptions are provided for, in which case the answer is: there are none, at least not for uses of email the policy applies to (i.e. correspondence with university staff). But if in doubt, you should check your university's actual policy.
To address some of the reasons proposed by other answerers:

Preferring to give out an email address which will continue to exist after graduation. This doesn't apply to correspondence between students and university staff. A student is free to give out whatever email address they wish for correspondence outside of staff at their own university, and is also free to share any email address they wish with staff at their university whom they would like to continue corresponding with after they graduate.
Having backups under one's own control. Students are free to make their own backups and store them whereever they like (so long as they aren't externally backing up anything which is not their own personal information).
The university might rescind access to email accounts in a legal dispute. In most jurisdictions, the university is legally compelled to provide to the other party, unaltered, all relevant evidence during discovery before any trial. If the student doesn't trust their university to follow the law, then see above about making their own backups.
Keeping their professional and private lives separate. This is an argument in favour of using the university-provided email account for university matters.
Nervousness about authorities being able to access the contents of their emails through the university. Using a personal email account doesn't help with this anyway, since any email correspondence between the student and university staff is already being stored on the university email system because that's what the staff use. If an authority had a legal power to access (or compel the university to provide) the contents of emails sent or received by a particular student, the authority would still be able to get them.

Some institional policies don't permit forwarding of email or bulk downloading of email.  That's a very controling policy more common in industry than academia.

@BrianBorchers That sounds like a policy which would be put in place for workers in a company who might be emailing other people's sensitive information to each other, in which case it's perfectly reasonable to forbid them to exfiltrate copies of it. But if a university has some reason to apply that kind of policy to its students (hard to imagine what that reason might be), then that suggests even stricter requirements for students to use their university email accounts and not their personal email accounts, i.e. fewer "legitimate exceptions".

@kaya3 "hard to imagine what that reason might be" - it is really hard to imagine that some students prefer cheating to actually doing course work and passing exams?

@alephzero I don't follow your inference at all. How would a policy of forbidding students from backing up their emails address cheating?

@BrianBorchers, ...I've never seen an academic email server that didn't support IMAP, and once one does, it's difficult and error-prone to distinguish between "bulk downloading" and just regular use by an email client with a particularly aggressive caching policy.

Keeping their professional and private lives separate.: The line can be drawn in a different place for students.  Some may treat all uni-related mails as professional, some may think of course-related as professional, but housing, welfare, and student support as private.  Then what about societies, that may involve rather sensitive topics?

@ChrisH I took the question as being about email correspondence between students and academic staff, but you're right, there are many other university staff than just academic staff. So you have a point that some students might prefer not to use their university email account for some of those non-academic purposes, but I think my main point stands, i.e. the policy only has whatever exceptions the relevant policy document sets out. The interest of staff in authenticating senders and recipients of emails should outweigh the student's preference, unless the university says otherwise.

Regarding societies, those are typically student-run, so they can have whatever policies they wish.

@CharlesDuffy: I have seen university email that didn't support IMAP.

Control of the content and their device-
I have had my emails destroyed by universities on multiple occasions - certainly I had backups the later times, but that's not particularly helpful when I cannot revive services attached to them. Nor are they sufficiently valuable to be worth my time to bring some valid suit (the second time I had a real, printed email asserting that I would be able to keep my email after graduation).
Many service provides are also through arguably horrible companies which students don't wish to have any accounts or even interactions with, especially if they are familiar with or at all zealous about privacy.
Different service providers also have competing and incompatible services, especially around the sharing of platform-specific files (ie. Google Docs "Why Not Use POSIX Capabilities?" vs Microsoft's Self-perpetuating Hellscape)

Still, that control comes at a price (will they manage their email better than the university? if they run their own, will or how frequently will it be hacked or rejected? how can they prove legitimacy if they're not part of the domain, etc.) and they are likely being obtuse. However troublesome, it's a requirement of modern academic institutions to maintain an email account with them, if just for accessing digital services.
Creating any content is dangerous, but you should still use their academic domain email for official business to provide some liability buffer, and also consider sending them a reminder to their personal account for important communications.

There are various tools to back up mails from an university mail account.

@peterh absolutely, and they should be used on the regular! .. still, a backup isn't everything, and you'll still find at least the case where 1) removal is a surprise/during time away 2) there are unrelated, 3rd-party services attached to the email (Stack Exchange, IEEE account,..) .. this is a catch-22 because often to get some academic perk (points with some service, free membership, etc.), you prove membership in academics with the domain account, but need to take extra steps (for each unique service) to switch it to something else immediately or before it's too late (?)!

One reason to require students to read their university email is simple database convenience: if a staff member is emailing a particular student about something, or emailing the members of a particular class (etc), and if the email is delivered to a student's canonical inbox, then we can effectively presume that that email was received by the student.  And we can declare ‘we presume you read studentidnumber@example.edu’.  If a student doesn't hear that a class was rearranged or cancelled, because they've decided not to read that email, then that's their problem.
Maintaining a database of students' preferred addresses doesn't work: how does that get updated?, who's allowed to query it?, what if some systems do query it and some don't?, how do you persuade (the admins of) the weird antique IT systems in Finance and in the Library to do that?
It would of course be highly desirable to let students configure that address to have it forwarded to some other preferred address.  We don't have to have them use the (probably hideous) institutional email interface.
One reason to require students to send email from their institutional account is, as others have suggested, to add a little bit of security (I am more confident that a query from studentidnumber@example.edu is really from Fred Bloggs than I would be about fluffybunny@gmail.com), and to keep things formal.  If I were emailing fluffybunny I would be to some extent within their private life, and if I were mad enough to be doing this, as staff, from a private address of my own (not a good idea!), then there's all sorts of way such an off-grid communication could be perceived as creating, or potentially enabling, a wide variety of improprieties.
I also am curious what the ‘personal issues’ are, that are quoted in the original question.  Like others, I'm a little sceptical that this might in fact translate to ‘I'm too idle to work out how to configure two addresses in my mail client, which I am going to have to do at some point in my professional life’.

Edited to add the following (since there may be an element of talking past each other, in the answers and comments here):
Looking at the other answers here, I get the impression that those (including me) saying ‘I don't understand, what's the problem?’ appear generally to be presuming that anyone reading or sending email is doing so via a mail client, where adding multiple addresses/identities, to receive and send email, is a core function; but those saying ‘it's really annoying having two addresses, or having to wrangle two UIs’ seem to be presuming that one reads email via a webmail interface.  In the latter case, I can see why having two addresses would potentially be inconvenient.
I don't forward my work or personal email addresses (plural in both cases) anywhere – I simply read them all in the one mail client.  Each of these has a webmail interface that I could use in emergency, but doing so routinely would drive me insane.  But someone who sees webmail as usable, through familiarity, would presumably set quite a high premium on only supporting a single address/identity, and would have a quite different take on this question and the various answers.

"(I am more confident that a query from studentidnumber@example.edu is really from Fred Bloggs...." You should have no confidence in that at all: just as anybody can write any name and return address they like on an envelope they put in the post, anbody can put any From: address they like in an e-mail that they send. The From: line merely tells you where your replies will go. (There have been systems designed to mitigate this problem, but they require a fair amount of expertise from the end-user who, for a start, must know whether or not they're using such a system.)

@cjs Sure, but the "reply-to" address is what matters here (though one does have to be cautious to check that the "from" and "reply-to" fields match).  If I get a message from student@example.edu, and I send a reply to student@example.edu, then student is receiving that email, even if they didn't send it in the first place.  The worst that happens is that student gets a weird email from me.

@cjs I said more confident, not that I'd start sending medical information this way!  What you say about the From header is true, but if I received a studentidnumber@example.edu email, and if it mattered, I could check through the Received headers to reassure myself that the sender had (probably) had to authenticate themself at some point, which would increase my confidence somewhat (though still not to 100% of course).  The point is that, in most cases, for most purposes, and for most senders and receivers of such an email, the @example.edu email does increase confidence.

@XanderHenderson The "reply-to" matters only if replying is the action that the student or attacker is requesting. If the action is, "I have dropped your course, so please don't send me any further notes or exam schedules," or "You can give my spot in lab _____ to the other student who wanted it because I no longer need it," an attack may succeed just fine regardless of where the reply, if any, goes.

@XanderHenderson You are perpetuating a common security failure that attackers use to greatly increase their chances of success: that information "X" isn't as important as medical records and therefore attacks using that information will do relatively little harm. And in student/professor interactions, email messages may well include medical information anyway! (E.g., describing long-term illnesses that affect ones ability to take tests.)

As for the Received: headers, most people don't know how to read those effectively, and even if they did, who's checking those? If you're not, you should go back to having "no confidence" in the From: line. If you are, it can be helpful as a heuristic, but hardly more than the "it sounds like that person" heuristic. And in all sorts of things like this, it relies on an end-user being careful and using good judgement, which is a very poor foundation for security; even security professionals have occasional judgement lapses, and good security needs to assume that this will happen.

(1) If I get a message from Student J Smith, who I know to be enrolled in one of my classes, and I reply to studentjsmith@example.edu, then either (a) the student who is associated to that address is getting my reply or (b) their account is so hopelessly compromised that there is almost certainly nothing I can do, anyway.  Hence all that matter is the reply-to field (as I need to make sure that my email is going to a student who is actually in one of my classes).

(2) Emails at my institution are somewhat aggressively filtered.  If something comes from outside of the institution, or contains red flags like reply-to and from fields which differ, a big yellow banner is placed at the top of the email to warn me that something is fishy.

(3) I am not sure what kind of attack you are envisioning which succeeds if (a) I send a reply to the official email address of a student who is legitimately enrolled in my class, or (b) which could succeed even if I don't reply at all.  Perhaps you could elaborate?

My personal reasons as a student:

I like to keep all emails in one place and if I switched to student mail I would have to update my email in all the countless places that I have used it. Currently I have my student mail redirect to my main account so that mails that get sent to my student mail still end up in my inbox.
If (when) I leave this university I would have to change my email again and like I mentioned in 1. this is a huge hassle.
Perhaps most importantly: somehow all online tools that are provided by my university are slightly annoying to use. My aversion for these tools makes me really not want to use their email. For example forced 2-factor authentication. However important cyber security is it really hinders my workflow when I have to open my phone everytime I want to login. My current email program is much nicer. Excuse me for this little rant.

In (1), you state that your student email redirects to your main account.  Excellent.  You can, presumably, also set the outbox to use your university account when you send a message (Thunderbird, for example, makes this quite easy; I have also set this up using the Gmail web client, and Apple's Mail.app).  One client, multiple inboxes and outboxes.  Honestly, this is how it should work. :\

@XanderHenderson I didn't know that was possible! I might consider this in the future

It's not my place to tell students what email address they must use.  It is my place, however, to tell them they are responsible for receiving messages I send out using tools within our LMS, and they can change their address that the LMS uses, or read emails from the account that the LMS uses.

Just in case there are others confused by the acronym, here's the Wikipedia page to LMS: Learning Management System.

It would not be surprising if the learning management system was configured to send email only to emails at the university domain.

@gerrit  I suppose that's a possible option, but my own experience is that it's a user configurable field.

Some universities have a governing body that operates like a Westminster-model parliament: the executive leadership team of the university proposes a policy, and the governing body votes on whether to adopt that policy.  The executive branch usually, but not always, wins the vote; when the executive branch doesn't win, its policy doesn't go ahead.  Sometimes, both students and staff opposed to a proposal by the executive are involved in making the case for a negative vote; if those students and staff wanted to discuss tactics or confer during the drafting of their arguments (at early stages, i.e. before they submit their arguments into the formal university system for campaign literature), then I think they'd probably want to keep those discussions off of university servers for fear of giving the other side of the debate advance warning of details of their arguments.
Some research students may feel a need to keep some of their correspondence out of the reach of vexatious and frivolous Freedom of Information Act requests (I suppose some might also feel a need to keep some of their correspondence out of the reach of genuine Freedom of Information Act requests, but that wouldn't count as "legitimate"),

If somebody was harassing or stalking a student using their university email address (which quite likely the university will give out to anybody who wants it), this is an excellent reason for using a private email address. Somebody can only get your gmail address if you give it to them.
It's also quite conceivable that you wouldn't want to tell your professor you had a stalker.

Of course having control over your email is a legitimate thing to consider. But there can be much simpler causes which seem more likely.
A perfectly valid and legitimate reason is also convenience.
It is much more convenient to contact people from your existing email, the one you already track and check, than have a specific account , only for 'university purposes'.
Most probably, the majority of students has already established communication channels in email, social media, sites etc, mobile apps, etc several years before enrolling in a university.
Most probably, the majority of their communication goes through these channels.
It is an extra burden for students, to check and use the 'university account' to send an email as they have nothing to gain and have to spend time and effort to set it up or check it.
When using an online email service, instead of email client, checking another email for an answer is also an additional burden.
On the other hand there is no additional benefit for a student to use the university account for communication. Especially if they are just attending courses and not doing research or any other activity that requires a more "academic" identity.

One potential personal reason, that a student might not want to explain: if a student is trans and not out yet, or out, but has not had an official name change recognized by the university, and does not feel comfortable with their birth name.  They haven't gotten to the point yet of changing their name officially, but one thing they can control: their email address.  They probably can't change their university email address, but they can change their gmail.

In my experience, the institutions I have attended and worked for have been very good about (1) assigning email addresses which are neutrally gendered (e.g. I was ahend006 in graduate school, and ahenders (with some numbers) as an undergraduate), and (2) these institutions have also been very good about changing emails around for folk who change their names (eg trans students, recently married students, etc).

Moreover, email addresses are a small part of what a trans student would be required to change.  For example, a learning management system (LMS - Blackboard, Moodle, etc) will typically give a student's full name (rather than a gender-neutral handle).  Should trans students be permitted to stop using an institution's LMS because of an incorrect name?

@XanderHenderson I make no judgement as to whether the student should be permitted to not use the email address; simply providing a potential reason.  The fact that it's only one of many things is irrelevant.  Some institutions may provide neutrally gendered email addresses, but some include names.

At the university I attended, university email addresses included names and it was impossible to change emails even with a legal name change (which I did while in college). All of the other learning management systems could be updated easily.

You are the teacher. He wants to pass your courses and not vice versa.

Sorry, I can only use the university account of the students on personal reasons.

His personal reason is that he is incapable or unwanting to use a new email address. He wants to use his gmail account forever.
The personal reason in your case is that the 30 second in your life worths more than the 30 minute of the IT-illiterate student to learn to use another email address. But you do not need to detail it.
That is all. You don't need to think too much about it. You don't need to spend time and intellectual effort for that.
You can safely use his uni mail address. If he does not read it, it is up to him. You have no time and you are not obliged to consider and follow such personal wishes.
P.s.
If the student has a problem to follow such a trivial administrative nuance, what will happen if he will need to work day & night, month long, on his thesis?
What will he say to his first boss, on his first workplace?

"Sorry I can not use my company mail, only my private mail account, on personal reasons"

I am sorry to say, but this is clearly the case that he needs a lession. If you do not give it him, the life will do.

University email and work email are sufficiently unlike that the comparison is unfair.

@Joshua No. Exactly this is what the student needs to accept. Sad that Xander Henderson's comments disappeared.

Getting the degree is a lot of effort, pain, sweat, both for the student and for the University. It must be so, this pain gives the value of the degree. The first, the pain of the student, is well known for all of us. The effort and sweat of the University is not so well visible, because it happens as the part of a big and (hopefully) professional hierarchy, but it is still there. The University serves the student by pushing him over his own limits, and the student pays for that with his young years and with a lot of money. It is a mutual cooperation on a deeper level.

Enforcing our own ego to the University, only to serve our own testosterone, kicks this cooperation on the back. And the behavior of the student is particularly disgusting that he covers it by that cloudy formulation.

As I can remember Xander Henderson's comments, he was not so sure in the intention of the student, because no one can read the mind of others. It seems, our experiences differ a little bit. I am nearly sure that the student just thinks that he can enforce things to the University, he wants to do that on egoism, and that he does not understand the cooperation with a hierarchy.

You are so authoritarian that you have forgotten that the student is the customer.

@Joshua The student is the customer in a diploma mill. There is no such thing that you can get a paper for your money, more clearly, yes there is, but it is not academia any more.

@Joshua In the Academia, you do not get your paper for your money. You get your paper because you are smart and worked hardly. Thus, you are not a customer. Payment might be an additional requirement, if the system needs it, but it still does not make you a customer. You are... imho, a contractual partner, if we want to see it on the economical view.

You undermine yourself. In a contractual partnership, one side does not dictate terms.

@Joshua The University does not dictate. They have a system. They accepted the student to integrate him into this system. The student is dictating, he does not want to integrate. Serious aggrevating circumstance is that he is doing it with such a "reason".

@Joshua Imho, in this context, "on personal reasons" means this: "I do not say my reason. If you resist, I will consider it as a personal attack and I will attack back with all possible measures. Not saying my reason is a part of my defense."


text:
Postdoc positions - a new trend?
I have observed a new trend in the academic life. I think it is something worthwhile discussing.
Many postdocs choose to leave American and European positions and pursue appointments in Asia, and more specifically China, Japan and South Korea. Not just fresh PhDs who are looking for their first postdoc positions, but also more experienced people more towards the tenure-track levels.
My question is: why is that?
Does it have to do with the salaries? Does it have to do with a better financial situation in South Korea, China and Japan compared to U.S and Europe? Is it related to the fact that postdoc positions are much scarcer in the Western World? Or maybe better work hours and environment?
Is it related to the existing industries and job opportunitites outside academia?
I have never lived or worked in Asia, and thus, any input would be very helpful.

"Many postdocs choose to leave American and European positions and pursue appointments in Asia." Hmm, where in Asia? Novosibirsk, Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Ankara, Kabul, Bangkok? About fourty percent of the world's population live in Asia, so it might be advisable to be a bit more specific. ;-)

@JochenGlueck that's a good point. Thanks for pointing out. I edited the post.

I think everyone makes their own choices. Still, I believe that "a new trend in academic life" is a very broad term. Are you referring to a field in particular? And how many "postdocs" are we (you) talking about?

Actually it is not just PhDs and post-docs.  One of my former professors left his position as a fully tenured professor at a top North American univesity to take a position at an Asian university.

"Many postdocs choose to leave American and European positions and pursue appointments in Asia" [Citation needed]

If that effect exists, I would assume it has more to do with people in general getting more mobile / internationally focused, and less with Asia specifically. Basically, more young people want to see the world, and doing a postdoc further abroad is a good opportunity to do so.


text:
Balance between spending time on research and preparing for presentations
Recently I noticed that whenever I have presentations to give, I end up spending quite a lot of time preparing for them. I imagine perfecting presentations takes time for everybody. But probably I take more time the average. As a result of the preparations, my presentations are well done, however, the issue is that while I am preparing for presentations, I am not actively doing research. Therefore, in that period of time, my research slows down a little. This is especially the case when I have very important presentations to give, such as at an international conference or for a job interview. At such times, I end up having a clear break from the research.
I understand that communication is an integral part of the research. It obviously has many benefits. I am not looking for ways to avoid/decrease communication, but merely expressing concern, and would like to know how fellow academics find the balance between spending time on research and preparing for presentations.
Some advice on this topic would be very helpful.

How much time are you now spending on creating presentations?

What stage of your career are you at? I have found that I have got better and faster at preparing presentations as I have progressed from PhD to postdoc. Like many research tasks, efficiency comes with experience.

I would say that as you progress, you spend more time while doing the research figuring out how best to present it - the two processes become intertwined. Then when the talk/paper come, you already have figures done since you made them while coming to your own understanding.

One part of it is reuse: Once you have some polished presentation materials, you probably don't want to bin them, but they might come in handy for your next presentation (given that it's unlikely that each of your papers and job talks will be about completely different topics). On top of that, you might also be able to reuse materials from your paper in your presentation, even if there are limits to that.

You have identified a small part of a problem that grows significantly as you progress through an academic career. Faculty members will not only have to find the balance between spending time on research and preparing for presentations; they will have to find the balance between:

doing research
supervising the research of PhD students
writing grant proposals
hiring people on granted proposals
preparing lectures
giving lectures
getting your heartbeat down to a reasonable level after giving lectures
grading exams
handling student complaints about their exam grades
answering to the examination committee on the topic of those one or two students who feel aggrieved about your handling of their complaints about their exam grades
reviewing papers for conferences and journals
registering for conferences
presenting papers at conferences
getting reimbursed for travel to conferences
attending meetings of eduational committees within the own university
participating in opposition committees for PhD thesis, within and outside of the own university
handling hundreds of emails per day
handling reminders of email writers who haven't heard from you within their own idea of a reasonable amount of time

And so on, and so forth, day in, day out. And this is just off the top of my head; this list is very likely non-exhaustive.
If you continue in an academic career, you will inevitably run into the problem that there is too much to do in the finite amount of time that you have. So, you must use the available time wisely. If you want to do some of these points with a high level of perfection, you will likely have to sacrifice some other tasks altogether. Alternatively, you can try to do as many of these things as possible, but throw the concept of "perfect" out of the window. For a given amount of time, you need to choose whether you want to do three things perfectly, or twelve things quite well. Noone else can make this choice for you.

(+1) Glad I retired before I saw this list explicitly! ;-)

Probably move "writing grant proposals" to number 1 and "attending meetings of educational committees" to number 2. Otherwise, very accurate.

Yes, putting "doing research" at the top was more aspirational than realistic :)


text:
How effortlessly can universities check where you logged in? What other IT details can they determine?
Assume you're accessing your university Canvas LMS and Intranet (is this the correct term?) —  e.g.  your university email, library website, etc... — normally, without VPN or proxy. Assume you haven't revealed anything about your locations or Internet details to university staff.
How readily or handily can university staff on their own deduce which city you logged in, if they can do this at all?
And how much can university staff deduce? IP address? ISP?

Who is "university staff"? IT services? Your course instructors? Some random professor? Also, what problem are you trying to solve?

Are you asking us if you can easily get caught lying to your professors about your location?

Does the university run its own servers, or does it contract out the provision of online services to some other organisation(s)?

This seems like a boat programming-type question, since "university" could be replaced with any other website or organization.

A professor usually won't have access to the required resources. IT staff would. If your chair has a separate network (ours does) which you were accessing, it might be easy to find your IP (=geolocation to some degree, ISP and so on) for them as well. What's the issue though?

This would be dependent on the specific software in use, configuration settings chosen by the institution, institutional policies and local laws, technical skill of the staff in question... there is no general answer at all.


text:
Use of casual writing in scholarship applications
I'm reviewing a scholarship essay for a younger cousin. In the essay, she has taken a tone that I would consider too "casual". I don't know if "casual" is the right word, but it is a style of writing that I was taught not to use when I was in school. In her essay she uses many of the following kinds of phrases:

"Well, ...."
"Nobody tells you, ... "
"..., to put it lightly."
"Let's face it, ..."

Whenever I've come across this style of writing in an academic or corporate environment, I've always assumed that the writer didn't recognize the amount of room between what they submitted and what I would consider "better" writing. If I see a comma splice, I can send a link to a thousand resources calling that out as improper. I have a harder time making an argument that using colloquialisms like the above are "wrong" and I'm afraid of stepping on the writer's voice. I've found resources on academic tone, but I'm afraid those suggestions may be too formal. Are casual phrases appropriate for a scholarship essay or would alternative word choice be advised?

Welcome to Academia.SE. Do you expect your essay to be read by admissions officers in the Office of Admissions, or by professors in a particular academic department? If your cousin is currently in high school, I would suspect the former, in which case we probably want to send this back to [writing.SE]. The reason being that the people here are career academics (professors, grad students, etc.); we are not involved at all with undergraduate admissions, and would only be guessing.

I've helped a number of undergraduates apply for, and get, scholarships.
It is absolutely OK and desirable to be informal, but the examples you've given are colloquial.  Your cousin needs to get rid of them.  You can help her.  The difficulty will be to get rid of the colloquialisms while remaining informal.  Avoid the passive voice and under no circumstances use phrases like "the author..."

If you want some less formal suggestions, as well as some explanations about why is that so, may I offer you some notes from the ThesisWhisperer (do check "more posts like that" as well). In short, it is absolutely acceptable in informal communication (blog posts, SE answers and such) but falls short wherever a certain jargon is needed. These "formal-sounding" verbal constructs are a part of it, they are needed to help conveying certain nuances. In particular, two of the arguably
biggest quirks of academic writing - use of passive voice and avoidance of the common SVO order - help avoiding the writing sounding subjective (not desirable when communicating scientific ideas!).
I've also seen/written "Well, ..." and "..., to put it lightly" in reviews but not the actual papers, FWIW.

Review is much less formal than submitting a paper. When submitting, you are opening up to the world, presenting and discussing some novelty. When reviewing, you are discussing among peers, I think you can be as direct as you would be when talking to someone you consider your peer while discussing things on a bench at the park.