You may not think that the way you handle the incoming email on your school account, presumably because someone has lost a pencil, particularly significant, but I hope you find the below document a comprehensive list on the deep inner psychology that stems from your Outlook.
The Personalised Account.
From your profile picture to your background, your Outlook email is more carefully coordinated that an Architectural Digest YouTube video. Whichever default background you have chosen to make out your email inbox with, I am sure more time went into that grave decision than into your latest English essay. The pop of colour is a joy to see – and probably indicates a long artistic career ahead of you.
Pinned Emails.
There are two sides to being a fan of the pinned email – one that you have a level of organisation that I can only aspire to, or you have twenty pinned emails from five months ago for a club/meeting/interview you forgot to sign up to/attend/email somebody about. Chances are that it’ll be there for the next five months as well. You may as well give up the wishful thinking now, and just delete them.
The Archive
People say you’re disorganised or cluttered because in your whole school career (of potentially five years) you have never deleted a single email from your inbox. I am here to confirm that they are wrong; that inbox deserves to be in a museum. You have throwbacks to things the rest of us can only dream about in our distant memories: Magic Mondays, old emails from an intense Hamilton phase back in Year 7, and the message from when you first ever signed up to Quizlet – happier times before you spent the whole night cramming on Quizlet for your French Oral GCSE the next day.
The Outlook app
This is taking organisation to the next level. The clear rigid lines of the Outlook app, compared with its no nonsense blue and white design – you are here to work and write truly professional emails. A chief executive in the making, and no one can tell you otherwise.
The ‘Reply All’
Don’t take this personally, but there is no denying – you are the most disliked person in the school. You will inform everyone that you have, in fact, found the yellow chemistry folder, lost by a desperate GCSE student. An email that will make everyone groan internally, grit their teeth, and send it instantly to the junk folder. Or you sent a message meant to a friend to the entire school, in which case you will have to forever bear your shame with austere dignity, knowing that on some level, you will never recover.
The Automatic Email Signature
It seems like a good idea – in theory. Time is money, and you could use those precious seconds you would spend typing out your name, to hurry to Hastings to be first in line for the lunch queue or bash out another couple of sentences on that history essay. Yet be warned, even at casual messages, perhaps when giving a friendly critique to a friend, you will still have to formally sign off ‘Kind regards’ and the full name and form you use around teachers.
The Premature Address
You live life on the knife’s edge. Even when sending a whole school email, you’ll type in the email address first and fill in the message second. You don’t care for those paranoid folks who don’t dare to put in the receiver until the last second in case of accidental finger slips – you are there to send a message and get things done. No matter the risk.
Emails sorted in Folders.
This level of organisation has moved past aspirational, to terrifying. Chances are you do far more subjects that necessary (four A-Levels for example) and have never once handed in a piece of homework late. Your planner is probably up to date, and calendar memorised – including clubs. An ideal student, a dream that most of us promise ourselves to be at the beginning of the year, only to slip away.
Have a good week – maybe you will even be inspired to go sort out that inbox. Or at least hope to.
