Dear Professor (who shall remain nameless),

On behalf of the entire student body, I would just like to personally thank you for the email you sent out last week inviting my peers and me to join LinkedIn and, furthermore, be part of each other’s professional networks.

While I do not know whether or not it was intentional for you to send my peers and me a request on this form of social media, I’m going to assume that it was nothing more than an accident, a mere slip of the finger as you clicked send all on your computer. You never meant to send that email to any of the members of the student body, myself included, but, if anyone responded, it would just be an added bonus.

Nevertheless, I appreciate your offer, as well as the additional email to accompany the dozens of emails I can count on receiving from the University on a daily basis, but I must decline.

If, in fact, you did mean to send the email to the entire student body, I must say that I am flattered, as I am sure my peers are also. While, again, I have no interest in joining LinkedIn at this time, and therefore have no need to respond to your request and be a part of your network, I am touched that my fellow students and I were hand-picked by someone such as yourself to be friends on LinkedIn.

Is that what they call it on there? Friends? Like on Facebook? I have no idea, but I’d like to think of us as friends at this point, wouldn’t you? But I digress. It is so humbling that you would want to make a personal connection with me (and I guess my peers too, though I like to pretend that I was the only one who received your invitation for friendship), as well as a professional one, despite barely knowing me, if at all.

Yet, you were so warm and personable in your message, it made me feel like you really knew me: “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” So few words, yet they hold so much. As a matter of fact, this almost makes me want to create a LinkedIn profile… alas, I’ll leave that for another day.

Once again, thank you very much for your consideration, and, despite the circumstances, I really do hope we can remain friends. If not, you should know that I’ll always look back upon our brief, but eventful, friendship with much happiness, and every time I open my student email account, I’ll be sure to think of you.

Sincerely,
Kaitlin