Don’t Reply All Rant

Don’t hit reply all. Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!

I’d like to tell you to never use reply all, but there may be legitimate reasons to reply all even if I can’t think of any of them. So consider my thesis to be: don’t use reply all ever!

While there may be a few times when replying to all is appropriate, I hereby give you permission to mess up by failing to reply all rather than replying to all inappropriately, which is far more likely.

It is like using effect as a verb. There are times when it is correct, but this occurs so rarely that using affect all the time is far less likely to get you in trouble. Reply all has that effect (which is not using effect as a verb).

Reply to the sender of the email only. S/he is the person who started the conversation in the first place. If the sender asks a question of ten people and they all hit reply all, you now have ten emails – and a possible reply from the sender to make number eleven. Just what you want - more emails!

What if each person sent a reply back to the sender and the sender sent a summary? Instead of ten emails, you have one. One. Only one. One that it is relevant to you. Do I really need to know that you can’t make the meeting because your daughter is getting her ears pierced or you are bringing gluten free doughnuts?

I know that some people can’t help themselves. Some are using phones with buttons so small that they hit the wrong choice. Some still get confused by the options. Some don’t understand the difference between reply and reply all. Some really want me to know that their spouse has strep.

There is an easy solution to this problem: When sending an email to a group of people, put the addresses in the BCC field. BCC stands for blind carbon copy. This means that those who receive the email cannot see the list of recipients, no matter how long. Putting the recipient list in the BCC field not only protects their privacy but also makes the email easier to read because it will not have the long list of addresses at the beginning, which is especially nice for those reading it on tiny screens. It also prevents anyone from using this list for other purposes. I love that people feel free to share my email address with large numbers of strangers.

If the long list is in the BCC field, the only person who will receive a reply is the sender, no matter how befuddled the recipient may be. No one’s email is shared at all! Problem solved.

Don’t use reply all. When sending emails to groups, put the list in the BCC field. Yes, you can leave the TO or CC fields blank, it will still send.

I will have to compose myself to write about group text messages, but we'll save that for another time. 

End of rant.

We Are Not Who We Were

Have you ever had a conversation with a distant family member who sees you occasionally and you realize that this person doesn’t really know you? They see you as who you were years ago. Their mental image of you has not kept up with the times.

This is a typical point of contention in families: as children grow and change, their parents and the other adults in their lives struggle to keep up, especially when the changes happen so quickly. However, children aren’t the only ones who change; we all keep growing.

I look back at my first years as a teacher, and I shake my head. I am amazed that I made it through! I am embarrassed by my mistakes, and I wonder what took me so long to figure things out. Sometimes, I look back at last week in the classroom and feel the same way.

One of the appeals of throwback Thursday is this embarrassment. We see the old photos and we are shocked! Yes, that is me, but it looks nothing like I am now  - on the outside.

I meet former students who have grown up, sometimes way up, and I struggle to see the person I knew years ago. Of course, they have changed physically, and as we talk, I am amazed and delighted by the wonderful people they have become. The person I knew has transformed into someone better.

Often, I beat myself up over stupid things I have done in the past. Sometimes, I am that distant relative who can’t see the older me. Maybe I am in denial, refusing to see the present me.  Maybe I get stuck.

It is easier to hang on to the past, clinging to the idea that our identities are static.  I don’t want to have to keep relearning and changing my views. I want people to be like the characters in books. My favorite characters are always in those pages. I know exactly what they will do. They are comfortingly predictable. Real people don’t work that way.

The reverse is true as well: I don’t want to let go of the negative feelings I had toward people in my past. I want to believe they are the same as when they hurt me long, long ago. Sometimes, those nasty people are still nasty. Sometimes, they have also changed and they, too, are embarrassed by their pasts. We don’t have to forget the past, but we shouldn’t imprint it on the present.   

When we see people daily or even just a few times a month, we don’t notice the changes. We adjust in such small increments that we are fooled into thinking nothing has changed. When we see people only occasionally or merely connect through Facebook, Instagram, or email, we are really conversing more with an old photograph than an old friend.

When my students visit, I need to get to know them again. We share a powerful past, but we haven’t shared much recently. Social media may provide the information, but those old anchors stay put. We have to take a new photo.

We are not who we were. I am not the person, teacher, husband, father, son, brother, friend, or relative I was years (or months) ago –and there big changes ahead.