Oh, yes. Recommendation writing season is upon us. This week alone I need to write letters on behalf of students applying for summer internships, resident advisor positions, study abroad programs, scholarships, and even to transfer to other schools.
I enjoy talking to students about what they hope to accomplish and what they have already achieved. It's nice that they feel that I know them well enough after one class with them to write a favorable recommendation. I like thinking that I may be helping my students achieve their next step... even if it is to leave TempCollege.
But.
I really am not a fan of the actual writing of the letter.
For one, I'm horribly slow. I know I'm overthinking the whole process. I know I should be able to bang out a good recommendation letter in less than 20 minutes. I know all of these things.
Letterhead is my kryptonite. I feel all my coherent sentences draining out of me once I see (or think about!) printing onto the watermarked paper.
I'm sure that I will improve with time. But until then, I've got a dozen letters to get through.
6 comments:
How many have you written over your career so far? Keep all of them as potential sources for letter templates. Start on yellow lined paper in order to really blot out the thought of white watermarked paper. Also, use any letters written for you as potential templates.
These are minor ideas. I agree, things like that can be hard to write. Good luck! A whole dozen!!
Yellow paper is my friend...
I keep the letters I have written to get me started with the new ones. It still takes forever as I have not written that many, but I do think there is hope.
Sounds like you are doing mini-interviews of sorts as prep - that's cool!
I've only written one for a faculty member. I'd have no idea where to start for students. And for so many different types of programs!
Hopefully they have given you plenty of time! I always heard horror stories from my advisor about people needing letters in a matter of days.
I have a hard time with this as well. I keep all my old letters and use them as a template but it still takes me a long time. Now I have templates for students, research assistants and those undergrads I knew from grad school vesus post doc school.
I just wrote my first official recommendation letter. For me, it took me longer to psych myself up and get my a** in the chair then to actually write it.
Silverfox: Probably about 20? So I have a long way to go. I didn't have any yellow paper, but I did write out the latest one by hand. You were right! I got some thoughts down quickly and then could edit things easily once I typed it up.
Sciencegirl: it is starting to get easier!
Albatross: They have all been really good so far. I don't think anyone has asked for a letter with a deadline closer than 1.5 weeks.
Psych post doc: Good idea to subsort the templates! I hadn't thought of that. I'm going to try it out!
Tina: You're right! I think knowing that a letter will take me an hour or more to write (for big programs) is another reason that I dread them.
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