Thurs, 15th Oct 2015, 22:36 Sorry to SPAM all of you, but ...



My students,

Sorry for spamming all of you, but I feel I should do this in order to
publically apologize to a student in the class who sent me email that
I inadvertently copied you all on.

The student's email was one of many that I regularly receive from students
when they successfully get their first program running.  It is always one of
exhileration, and in fact is a joy to receive.  I intended to share it with
my TAs, since I think they would have also enjoyed it.  Instead I mistakenly
bcc-ed it to the class.  Since I had not intended to send it to all of you,
I did not delete his identity, and likely embarrassed him.  I would never want
to embarrass a student, and so I feel disappointment in myself for doing so.

This has happened only twice in the 16 years I have been at UT, twice too many
times as far as I am concerned.

So I deeply apologize to the student who feels great happiness in completing
lab 1, and I hope he was not too embarrassed by my unwittingly sharing his
email with the rest of the class.  The fact is, it is not the only letter
I got this week like this, and I think his positive emotion is a good thing,
and beautifully captured the spirit of all the emails I received from students
who passed the first midterm last week.  However, it was private, and I am
very unhappy with myself when I divulge private emails.

I apologize.

Yale Patt