Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

“Your mailbox is almost full.” That dreaded subject line is one that I have received from Microsoft every single day for the past two weeks. When clicking into that email, all your eyes can focus on is that bright red bar filling up the box or even exceeding it. 409 MB is simply not enough! I wonder how much of my available storage is taken up by these reminder emails!  

Natasha Leong ’21

Have colleges been sending more emails than usual? Well, I would know because my mom signed me up to be on dozens of colleges’ mailing lists. Thanks, mom. The College Board has been firing off emails left and right about changes due to the virus. Yes, I open them, but do I read them? The answer is usually no. I have this uncontrollable need to make the blue number of my unread emails disappear. Did anyone else sign up for the canvas notifications? My inbox is full of them!  And I could not even begin to count the number of emails that begin with “Hi Mr. Kelly, could you forward this to the whole school?”  

Have teachers been emailing me about forgotten assignments? How many times does the College Board need my information? How many times will they email me that AP submission is working for 99% of test-takers, yet somehow not me? Why do I still have a lost and found an email from my ninth grade year? 

What am I to do with all of these pent up emails? While some of us are stuck at home, it can be challenging to overcome boredom. Good news! I have a new activity you can add to your list: deleting your emails!  I never thought it would come to this – then again, I guess it gives me something to do while stuck at home! 

Reading your past emails can be a fascinating trip down memory lane. As you scroll to the bottom of Outlook and see emails all the way from 2017. “Meeting in the Crowe after study hall.” Remember the Crowe? Remember having a study hall? I recommend starting at the beginning of your emails to start your mass deletions, as most of them are most-likely irrelevant. 

Deerfield, if there is one important message that you take away from this article it’s that our mailboxes are too small! We need more room to store the many memories that have accumulated through our time at Deerfield. In thirty years, I will still be excited to read emails from Mr. Barbato with the subject line “Weekend activities”! I will still ignore the weekly email that asks me to evaluate the great members of Deerfield’s faculty. I will look back and laugh at the email exchanges during my ninth and tenth-grade years during study hall with my hallmates, as we counted down the minutes till the silence ceased. So if IT is reading this, please give us more storage! We want to keep some of these timeless and some more unimportant emails as a memory for years to come.