How to write for help

I often receive some emails/messages from trainees for raw data or technical/academic help. Sometimes I got upset about the way they are writing although I ultimately offer suggestions. But I’m definitely not sure others would do the same with joy under the unskilled letters.

I also talk about this with some PIs, who face the similar situations a lot. Here are some advices,

1. Introduce yourself (name, lab, affiliation, etc), how you know the contact, what’s your situation, what specific troubles you meet and what you will do with the knowledge.
2. Try to do your best to prepare the specific questions. If it is already a well-known and conventional technology or concept, you probably could get what you need from the previous publications or even textbooks.
3. Try not to ask some senior PIs when you are a freshman in research. You’d better ask your supervisor for help. Let she/he write to them first. That is because the senior PIs are so busy (maybe they just lost a funding application, fight with the unhappy husband/wife, finish a crazy slow-pace discussion with students, rejected again by editors…), and they will take more seriously if your supervisor write first (also kinda respect).
4. Always be patient and thankful about even a little advice since maybe just a single valuable word for you is actually from dozens of failed and struggling experiments by others.

The plane just landed. It’s raining outside and ‘Dear Deloris’ (from the movie Green Book) come to my ears through the headphones. This flight is for my little brother, struggling a lot about his PhD thesis in geoscience. He reserved a meeting room beside the lab and hope we can make it right.

20 DEC 2019