It s the safest bet. In a non-business situation, it is recommended that you bypass the standard formalities. At most, only include something along the lines of Dear Virgil or just Virgil . Please keep the following statement in mind when communicating with your mentor. There is no such thing as a private e-mail.
Some companies monitor employee e-mail.
E-mail software is like all software in that occasionally things go wrong. Either way, what you thought was private is not private anymore. This is important to remember because there could be some questions that your mentor may not answer due to the fact that they don t want others in their organization to know this information. If your mentor chooses not to answer one of your questions, it may be a result of a privacy issue. In this situation simply move on to another question.