Re: Letters of Reccomendation -Reply

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

I haven't participated in this thread before, because, among other things
I've been doing letters of rec :)  But I find they're often one of the few
useful things I can really do to thank people who have contributed
important things to my writing center.  Given that the first couple of
years when our center was just getting started were very demanding I'm
sometimes in the interesting rhetorical position of having to write a "
"walks on water" letter for someone who really did (e.g. assistant
directors). I try to be extremely specific about what the person did.  i
suppose if you're trying to demonstrate that someone walked on water you
need the details about water temp, salinity, rate of flow etc. Maybe
the letters have helped.  At least when one of the people in our Provost's
office asked whether working in our writing center helped our graduate
students get jobs, I went and checked who's gotten jobs, and it turns out
that over the past two years a slight majority of the people who've gotten
jobs have both worked in our writing center and have had letters from me, 
though  not all of the walks on water variety..
Or perhaps we can all be relieved that none of these things has blighted
anyone's chances ;-)   

Since I teach required *grammar* courses too that people tend to approach 
with fear and loathing, I'm also sometimes in the
interesting rhetorical position of writing positive letters for people
whose academic performance was, on the face of it, not all that brilliant,
but who did demonstrate character traits that might be useful to
employers, e.g. tenacity in the face of adversity, the ability to work
really hard at something you find difficult and scary, or the intellectual
flexibility to engage with something you thought you'd hate but that
turned out to be fun after all.  I don't know whether I'd consider these
evaluations for corporate America (or for Texas high schools), but again,
it can be a chance to do something useful for someone I think highly of.


As for letters of the doubled***d type, of course there's always: "I
cannot recommend X more highly."


Sara Kimball