Mark Chung

Maybe you introduce yourself first. Make yourself seem personable — start with a “Hi” or a “My name is…” or “I’m a first year in TD!” 

Or maybe tug at the instructor’s heartstrings first: “I have a deep and enduring passion for Statistical Methods with Applications in Science and Finance. I can’t explain it — I just find immense fulfillment in learning about stochastic processes.”

What’s tricky is that you’re limited to a thousand characters. You have to be brief. Why, concisely, do you deserve a seat in this class more than the next person on the waitlist?

“Me. Class. Smart. Good.” Too brief? 

You could just be honest and to the point: “I don’t even necessarily want to take this class, but if I do, it might just work out that I have 30 minutes for lunch in the dining hall on Thursdays and then I can maximize my grilled cheese intake.” 

Ethos, pathos and logos all in one request. Promising. 

Even if you are excited about a course, it can be hard to transmit that curiosity in one thousand characters. You could write: “I am fascinated by this research and am more than excited to engage in it with my classmates throughout the course of the semester. I am GENUINELY extremely interested in and excited about this content.” 

Even if all that is true, doesn’t it come off as overly enthusiastic and rather fake? At least being motivated by grilled cheeses seems authentic.

I know that I’m supposed to be an independent almost-adult now that I’m at the end of my first year of college. But I don’t know if I feel ready to decide what classes I should take — how am I supposed to choose the right ones? I don’t pretend to know how I’m supposed to know how to get the best education I can here. Yet here I am, having to persuade instructors that I do. 

Depending on the course, I could write to the instructor: “I’m lost, I haven’t declared a major, I like to read and write and I should probably stick to that. According to my Econ professor, my math skills are not the strongest. But I still like math, too. Is this course even useful for me? Help!”

That’s honest. Perhaps too honest?

I won’t say writing these requests is groveling, but there is definitely a grovel-y element of artifice to the process of writing a permission request. You have to pretend to know a lot more about the professor and the subject than you really do if you want to get into their class.

We were taught how to present ourselves in a favorable way when we applied to Yale. To get in you have to write yourself a nice, cohesive narrative — there has to be a theme to it, a trajectory. It’s a pitch. 

We learn how to advertise ourselves to professors too; we use the same skills we did senior year of high school on our Common Apps. You emphasize your enthusiasm for the class, and you prove you’re qualified. And you might exaggerate both how excited and qualified you are — that’s what you’ve been trained to do. 

I don’t like writing instructor permission requests, and I’d be surprised if professors really enjoyed reading them. They’re very performative, formulaic even. A friend of a friend starts every permission request he writes with “My interest in this course is threefold.” Not to disdain that; I might try it. Fourfold, fivefold. 

As with administrators of every other selective club or activity on campus, professors know that you’re driven, you’ve done cool things, and you’re probably a great participant in seminar. You probably have some big ideas you’re interested in discussing. I’d contend that everybody here does, if you ask them the right questions. 

So the authorities that make these calculations end up choosing the students who advertise themselves the best. 

Yes, it’s a skill to be able to sum up your ambitions and talents in a nice little package and present it to an employer, and it’s certainly a valuable one to have. In the worlds we’re going to get launched into after we’ve written our last instructor permission request,  investing, business, science — or something like that, I’m probably going to study History or English — you have to know how to compete. 

I wouldn’t get rid of instructor permission requests altogether — all things considered it is a fairly equitable system. It’s a degree removed from a lottery. Not everything we earn based on merit has to be mediated by competition, but Sterling professors and seminar spots are scarce resources.

Instead of having us pitch ourselves to a professor in empty platitudes, I think we should have to answer a question, or ask one, related to research the professor’s done, or the material. Or write a haiku about it, to at least provide the instructor reading with some entertainment. 

When you have to advertise yourself to anyone, you lose something important: authenticity. We’re college students. We are bright and curious, but also, we don’t know much. We should be more honest about that. 

Speaking for myself at least, I’m intimidated by the plethora of options we have at our fingertips, given that whichever we take will, we’ve been told, direct our careers and decide who we are going to become. That’s too much pressure on one class – what if I want to take it for fun? What if I really am just curious?

I think my best attempt at an instructor permission request would read like this: “Hi, I’m Adele. I know a little bit about Medieval Philosophy, but not much. I like talking about philosophy — I like testing out different epistemologies and seeing how they fit with how I think or act. I get nervous about talking in seminar, and I won’t always be the first to pipe up when you ask a question, but I work really hard, I do the readings, and I have opinions and a voice. I worry I won’t be taken seriously, or that I won’t earn the privilege of being listened to, and tested. I’m not so worried about failing; that I can handle. I’m curious – aren’t you curious about why I’m so curious? Can I be curious in your classroom?”