Making sure that you are on the mailing list for the class listserv

English 251: Introduction to Literature

Making sure you are on the class listserv

One of our first orders of administrative business in the course will be to get everyone on the mailing list for the class listserv. The registrar will automatically enroll you on this, when it adds your name to the class roster. But this will happen only when it processes your enrollment in the course (and this may not be done until the end of the week in which you enrolled).

It is your responsibility to ensure that you are on the listserv mailing list and to regularly check your mail. In the past there have been cases of students who discovered one or two weeks before the final that they knew nothing of what had been coming across the listserv. As you can imagine, this was a disaster.

If you add the course after the beginning of the semester, you should send an e-mail message to me giving your e-mail address and explaining that you want to be added to the listserv immediately. Be sure to mention which course you are taking with me so I will know which listserv to add you to. (I teach more than one course, and each has its own listserv.)

This will ensure that you do not miss any vital messages that get transmitted before the Registrar gets around to processing your Add-Drop slip. I can arrange to send you messages that have gone out before you were on the list -- but only if I know when you got on the list.

Everyone enrolled at K-State is automatically assigned an account (with password) on the KSU Unix system. You have one even if you have never heard of it. It is at this address that e-mail sent over campus course listservs will reach you, so it is essential that you get familiar with your account and make a habit of logging in regularly to see if there is some change in assignment, some question from another student that I've answered and posted to the class as a whole. If you do not remember your computer account-id and/or password, take your KSU-id card with you to Hale Library 313 and get this information from the consultant, who will also demonstrate the procedure of logging on.

There is also on the Web a primer on Getting Started with your K-State Unix account.

While you are visiting the Consultants in Hale 313, you can also get the instructions for using e-mail on the campus system.

The type of computer account that everyone on campus has been assigned is on the domain "ksu.edu" and has the following form: your-id@ksu.edu . Many of you will also have accounts at other domains on campus, e.g., phys.ksu.edu or dce.ksu.edu or in some subdomain of oznet.net. Others will have accounts off-campus -- with some other local internet service provider or one of the free e-mail utilities on the web. Be advised that campus listserv e-mail will be sent only to addresses on the mailing list, and that the address that the enrollment process will automatically supply for you will be your ksu.edu address. If you want to have your listserv mail sent to some other address, read this.

If you don't already know how to use Pinemail, practice using it to send and receive messages with a friend, and send a message to the instructor asking to have your name added to the listserv mailing list. My e-mail address is lyman@ksu.edu . You should send me this message from your account (i.e., not from this web window), so that I will be able to get your e-mail address from the mail header of your message. (If you send it from window that pops up when you click on my address listed at the bottom of the page, your address at ksu.edu will not automatically come along, and I won't be able to enroll you on the address list -- unless you remember to put your own address in the "Cc:" slot of the mail header or in the text of the message itself.) Be sure to tell me which course you are in, or I may guess wrong and put you on the mailing list for one of the other courses I teach.

Check out some tips on making Pinemail work for you in a powerful and efficient way. You can set it to display the most recent arrivals first. You can sort your mail (both incoming and sent) into a variety of directories, one for each correspondent or class or theme. And much more.

In the long run, it will pay you to learn how to access your ksu unix account from anywhere else in the world, using a telnet utility. There is a memo explaining how to do this. If you're new to e-mail, though, it's best to save this to later. If you remember where you read this, you can always just return to this page and access the link when you need to.

Go to the Home Page of the course.

Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome. Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

This page last updated 12 January 2000.