A few weeks back, I completed a survey saying that I was interested in participating in a focus group to determine why our VT Career Services hardly gets any use. The focus groups would be sponsored and put together by Career Services themselves with the hopes of discovering why few students harness their resources.
Within my survey, I commented that many students are simply not concerned with looking for post-graduation employment until their final semester or later. Some have family hook-ups they take full advantage of, others vacation after commencement and return looking for a job. In effect, only prudent and wise students have been using Career Services with any level of efficiency. I must say, not in boasting or with demeaning, but with an unbiased reflection of the general populus of this campus, there is a scarcity of prudence and wisdom within the student body. Might I be allowed to quote the ever popular t-shirt, “Blacksburg: A Drinking Town with a Football Problem”?
Anyways, so I got an email Monday, I suppose, as a response for my focus group interest. I never read the email. But I received another one just today and noticed it said the deadline for choosing a focus group session was tonight. I skimmed through the available times and was considering the options. But then a piece of text in the email caught my eye.
First, let me say that email formats matter to me. Emails with a well-balanced format are always appreciated on my end, and clever usages can have the effect of a well-needed grin. An email with a background pattern or image gets deleted or ignored, as was the case with that first email at the beginning of this week. It had a background pattern and background patterns make me think of a kid playing around with a Do-It-Yourself AOL homepage. Say hello to junk mailbox. The second email, from today, had the same background (gosh!) but it had the word “deadline” in it, so I suffered the hideous look for a moment.
Second, but as an extension from the first, email text itself must be chosen and formatted carefully. Italics are to be used for emphasis, bold is to be used for new headings or vital information, and underlines are to be incorporated into an email only when warning of nuclear apocalypse. There was a line in this second email that read as follows: “I look forward to hearing back from you and I am Extremely excited to have the opportunity to work with you!”
By itself, that line looks harmless, but the format entirely disgusted me. To begin with, the font of the email body was Comic Sans, which I LOATHE. But for the sake of my point, I can entirely overlook such misconduct. What bothered me was “Extremely”. Capitalizing a word is fine, particularly when you’ve already overused italicized emphases. But it wasn’t just capitalized. It was in italics. And it was bold. And ::my wrath being held back:: it was underlined.
Extremely. There might as well be a few dozen exclamation points after the sentence!!!!!!! Right?????????!!!!!??
I didn’t respond to that email. Perhaps, my survey comment was taken as a powerful truth, because then I will be fully justified in not attending a focus group session. Considering the amount of junk mail I get, not spam but school emails that don’t pertain to me, my usual email formatting prejudices typically serve as a proper discriminating tactic for weeding out the rest of the mail that gets through my junk filters. Having to garner information from this email truly exasperated my junk filtering abilities and I may need a break from the task for a while. The weekend and the relaxation it brings, however, is only a couple days away.
Music: Vitalic, "Poney, Pt. 2"
