Ethos

Question: Are there tips for managing email when in college or university?

The email accounts provided by colleges and universities are for your use while you are in school. This is the official address to which most professors and the school will send email. You can recognize this email address by the suffix ‘.edu’.

You have two basic choices regarding your educational email account. First, you can use it as your primary account to conduct all your business and communications. Second, you can use this account for school purposes only, and use a personal account for non-school activities.

Please note that except in the largest or richest of institutions, once you complete school, your educational account is closed. Relying on your educational account can often lead to significant loss of information if its cancelation catches you unaware. At some point, and often at an inconvenient time and with little notice, your address and stored mail will be purged.

It is for the above reason that I recommend the second choice — using both educational and personal email accounts.

Using multiple accounts can seem like additional work. If you have more than two or three accounts to check, that may be true. Still, there are solutions that take but a few extra steps. Use the one that works best for you.

If you are using webmail only, take the following steps.

1. Be sure you have a working personal email account. These can be free (e.g. gmail.com) or for a fee (e.g. mail.com).

2. Set your educational account to automatically transfer messages to your personal account.

3. If you have them, transfer your previous emails from your educational account to your personal account.

Hint: The downside to this option is that when you send mail, you will not be using your educational address. Some institutions may block email whose send and reply address are not the same.

To solves the downside noted above, use an email client (e.g. Eudora, Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird), simply take the following steps.

1. Set up an account profile on your email client for each of your email accounts.

2. Use your email client to receive, access and store your email on your computer.

3. Use your email client to upload email using your educational or personal account.

Hint: You will need your username, password, pop and stmp server address to set up these profiles. If you want to maintain maximum flexibility and access, use a email client like Eudora, Mail or Thunderbird.

For technical support on how to do all this, please contact your service provider.

For example: I have my own web space, the domain www.practicalethics.net. This allows me to have my own professional email address. I set up my educational account to automatically transfer messages to my practical ethics account. That way when I download my email into Mail (OSX), or view it via the web, it is all in one place. Nor can it be accessed or erased by a third party. And because I use Time-Machine with Time-Capsule (OSX), my mail is automatically backed up every hour, every day, every week, every month. So when my drive recently died, I was able to recover all my mail going back to 1997!

I wish I had read something like this before the University of Minnesota erased my .edu account. And I hope this column helps you manage your email both during and after school.

Cheers, Bill

William Lynn :: May.19.2008 :: Student Space :: 2 Comments »