Lessons in Recommendation Letter Requests

You want to apply for a fellowship. It's really cool, with four weeks in a fantastic place, learning about something that will help both your research and your teaching, and you have had wonderful experiences with similar fellowships in the past. Still,you aren’t sure if you should apply since you do have a lot of writing and research to do, so you debate about it for a while, almost too long a while. Finally, you decide to apply.

You need two recommendations. You ask someone familiar with your teaching and someone familiar with your research. You list your qualifications for the fellowship, you let them know how to tailor the recommendation. You admit to both that you are asking at the second to last minute and say that you will understand if you have given too short of a notice. You just ask that they let you know either way. Research Reference Writer says, “no problem.” That letter is off by the weekend. Teaching Reference Writer does not respond.

You have mentioned this application to Teaching Reference Writer a week earlier. Writer has written recommendations in the past, and the two of you have discussed that Writer will tweak earlier letters for this fellowship. In your request, you all but write the points that should be tweaked yourself.

You let a few days pass, knowing Teaching Reference Writer is slow on e-mail responses. Teaching Reference Writer still does not respond. You send another e-mail, knowing that time is now very short, and asking that Writer let you know either way.

Still no response. The deadline passes. You aren’t certain the status of your application, but hope Teaching Reference Writer got the letter in.

Director of the Fellowship kindly contacts you to tell you that your second letter is not there. Director gives you until the end of the week to get the letter in. You forward the message to the Writer, again saying that you will understand if Writer cannot, just let you know either way.

You receive no response. Again, you foolishly hope that the letter got there but find, on Monday morning, that it has not. The Director is more than generous in giving you another 24 hours. You forward this message again.

Then, you sit down and write your own recommendation. After all, you probably did not give enough time in the first place, and now that you have been given this gift of the extension, you might as well make this easy on the Writer. You forward this letter and tell Writer to just forward it to the director of the fellowship at the enclosed e-mail address.

You receive no response. It has been three weeks since the first request. You do receive responses to other e-mails to this person, but not to this one. You go to Writer's office. Writer is not there.

Now, at the end of the day, you are frowning. Teaching Reference Writer should be someone you can rely upon to at least say “no, not enough time” to your request. Now, you have yet another in your list of unreliable reference letter writers. People who should be otherwise but, for various individual reasons, are not (that's a subject for another blog post).

So, you change the letter to match another person’s relationship with you. You turn to them to sign off on it at well-past the last minute. That person does. You will make that person cookies, kiss that person's feet, babysit that person's cat, substitute for that person's classes at the last minute -- anything -- in return for this favor.

Next time, you will give much more time between the first request and the deadline. It is, after all, courteous. You knew this all along and your own uncertainty about applying delayed you. Next time, you will write your own “sample” recommendation letter to include with the request(although you sort of did the first time here, but let’s not quibble). Next time, you will find someone else altogether, and if that person ignores you after the first request, you will find yet someone else.

You yourself will always write a recommendation letter immediately upon request from now on in order to spare anyone else from this sort of panic. Meanwhile, you accept responsibility for your role in losing this fellowship.

Shit. It was going to be a pretty cool fellowship, too.