BLUF Exercise 2

There are two questions hidden in this short but distracting email. Write them out. 

"Dear Dr. Stauffer,

The secretary of the marketing and management department gave me your e-mail address.  I just have a few questions about the Master of Science in Marketing.  My name is XXXXXXXX and I am entering my second semester as a graduate student.  I recently decided to switch from the MBA program to the marketing program.  I have figured out my schedule based on the classes offered previous semesters.  I would like to know if  these classes are going to be offered the same semesters they have in the past?  I have it scheduled that I could possibly graduate in December of this year.  I also have a question about the catalog.  It states under the section called support course work outside marketing  that six hours are needed, but there are three courses and it does not specifically say choose two of the three.  I wanted to know if I had to take all three because this would make the marketing program a 39 hour program and the catalog states it is only a 36 hour program.  I look forward to hearing from you.  Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,"

Click on the image of an aged and catatonic Master Squid for the school solution.

What have we learned?

Even though both Email 1 and this email are the shortest in my collection of confounding student emails, I had to read them two or three times, slowly, to divine what exactly the students were asking me to do.

The basic problem is that the thing students ultimately want from me is tucked away so thoroughly, yet so haphazardly, that I have to go back in and rip out all the unnecessary blab to find the actual request and the good information I need to address it. (If it's even there.)

Yes, it's true. I was in the Army, in one form or another, from the age of 17 to 51. I never thought like you do, and probably never will. So you're bound to include all kinds of unnecessary blab in your emails that I would rather you not include. 

That's fine.

Just do me and your future bosses the favor of grabbing the essence of your request—what it is you want me to do or want me to get out of your communication—and set it outside the blab bramble you're about to write.

Put it up front, and you have my attention.

BLUF me, Baby.