My Second Least Favorite Part of This Job - Recommendations

The worst part of the job is grading, hands down.  I really can't think of anyone disagreeing with that point.

To me, the second worst part of this job is writing recommendations.  Don't get me wrong - I want to do everything I can to help my students get jobs.  I am honored to be asked to write recommendations and take the task very seriously.  But I find writing them as a whole incredibly hard work.

Some individual letters are actually pretty easy.  The student who is truly spectacular and who I know well because she's been my research assistant or I've worked with him outside of class on some project -- that's an easy recommendation to write.  It takes time, and I want it to be perfectly crafted to get across everything I know, but it's not that hard to do that.

It's when you get to other students that the difficulty kicks in.  The basic challenge is this: I want to praise the student and give her a worthwhile recommendation but I don't want to a) diffuse the worth of my truly excellent students' recommendations or b) damn with faint praise.

Maybe others have mastered this, but I find this an absurdly hard line to walk.  Any tips or thoughts?

 

Comments

[Orin Kerr]

What makes a letter "worthwhile"? Do you mean worthwhile to the student, in that it will get her a job, or do you mean worthwhile to the employer, in that it accurately informs the employer about the pros and cons of the student?

[David S. Cohen]

Both. The goal is to get the student the job, but to also accurately inform the employer. If I thought that doing the latter would not get the student the job, I would (and have) told the student that I won't write the letter.

[Archana]

Fascinating - from my perspective in graduate admissions, it's very helpful to see well-crafted letters about the applicants.

[Stew Young]

The best one I saw written, for a student that did not have a particularly good work ethic, was: "If you get this person to work for you, you will be lucky indeed." That doesn't seem like damning a student with faint praise...

[Chris Fabricant]

Clinical professors are probably confronted with this issue more often than doctrinal professors. We are frequently asked for recommendations because we know students' work in a "real world" context quite well, and that may or may not be beneficial to our ability to write glowing letters. (Insert solution to quandary here.)