hello excuse me, can you tell me where I am? (introducing yourself or your child)
It’s the start of the school year, and we’re all agonizing over it… how to introduce our kids (or ourselves!) to the new teachers, professors, administrators, supervisors, managers, you name it. And it feels deeply uncomfortable at some level… we don’t really know where we stand and already we’re trying to change something about it.
I have the same problem. I have been staring at the “Parent/Guardian Information Sheet” for my younger child, Laughing Boy, for six days now, and I know I really need to finish filling out the part where his teacher asks what my “hopes and dreams” are for my child this year in first grade. Last year I felt like we successfully pulled off “Operation Do No Harm” with half-day kindergarten, but this year is for real. Laughing Boy is a great kid with tons of little boy energy and little boy sweetness (if I do say so myself), but I’m worried about whether he’ll be understood, challenged, mislabeled, ignored, suppressed, or something else. I’m guardedly optimistic (the teacher has three male children of her own, plus a dog, and a good reputation from older sister Little Bird’s male friends’ parents), but it’s just hard for me to answer, “What are your hopes and dreams?” with something other than, “I hope the dream doesn’t turn into a nightmare!”
And I’m lucky — my kids aren’t markedly twice-exceptional, just gifted and intense. When there’s some actual, “Um, I really need you to know about this,” aspect to the situation, as with many of the folks I work with (and even with myself as an employee or supervisee!), it’s even trickier. “Maybe if I say something, then it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy — perhaps I should just say nothing and hope the teacher doesn’t notice, maybe the kid will be okay this year.” “Maybe they’ll think I’m one of Those Moms.” “Maybe I should give them a few weeks to get to know each other before trying to have ‘the Talk.'” But of course, that trick never works. Some time soon, usually before Thanksgiving, but the longer it takes the worse you know it’s going to be, they call you, and then you know it’s going to be bad. By that point, they’ll have already noticed, they’ll have already been suffering in silence thinking that you didn’t think there was a problem or that you’re going to freak out or get them in trouble with their boss if they don’t handle you correctly, and building in up in their minds just as much as you’ve been building it up in yours. We all do this.
Okay, enough denial. So what do we say and when and how?
“When” is easy. Not at Back to School Night — teachers are very stressed out and trying to manage all of the logistics. The only thing you want to do there is introduce yourself warmly (so they know you showed up!) and say something positive. If what you need to talk about is something that can wait a few weeks, you can let it wait a few weeks and see what they do. If it’s something that’s going to need immediate understanding, then I would advise asking the teacher when you could have “just a few minutes, nothing formal, I just wanted to tip you off about some stuff before we get too far into the school year.”
Now on to “what and how.” Here’s a basic outline of a proactive introduction to someone’s, er, quirks. Replace quirk descriptions to fit your situation. (I’m going to alternate genders, sorry all you English teachers.)
0. Fredwina is really excited about RitzySchool, and so are you. You want to make sure that this is going to be a positive experience for her. In the past, she has had some problems, and you want to make sure we’re all on the same page so that there are no misunderstandings, so that we can all work together, and so that we can head off any issues before they get big. (Hear all that nice friendly collaborative language?)
1. When he does the stuff he’s been doing that has been creating problems in other situations… Give a couple of short examples, such as, “She wants to make friends with other kids but isn’t sure how to approach them, so sometimes in the past she has gotten too much in their faces,” or, “He’s really excited about learning something new and gets so into it that he forgets that he needs to let other people talk,” or, “She has a lot of ideas but struggles to get them out in writing and really gets stuck on classwork or homework,” or, “He has finished his work and his hands are so eager to be busy that he tends to stick peas up his nose,” or whatever. Frame them positively in terms of what the child’s motivation typically is, and realistically in terms of what the behavior is. The goal here is not to give the worst-case scenarios, but to give the person some sense of what they might observe and misinterpret and to let them know that you’re not in denial.
2. … it’s not because he’s a bad or wilful or nasty or lazy or dumb kid. Neither is it because you’re a rotten or clueless parent.
3. She’s doing those things because she is well-intentioned, but really does struggle, really is confused, really does have a hard time remembering what the rules are, etc.
3a. If the kid has a diagnosed or strongly suspected disability, say so. Most professionals (especially in schools, perhaps less so in camps and various paracurriculars) will have heard of many of the major players (Asperger’s, ADHD, anxiety, etc) that are often in the news. I know, you worry about the label. But without the label, the kid gets different labels — “obnoxious,” “willful,” “disrespectful,” and worse. Remember that helping professionals tend to do best when we evoke their compassion and their desire to be good at helping.
3b. If the kid presents differently from the way most kids with that label present, say so, in a way that respects the teacher’s experience. “A lot of times, people don’t realize what’s going on because he has put a lot of work into learning how to compensate. But it’s still very much a work-in-progress for him.”
3c. If the “disability” is that the kid is gifted and you’re concerned that she may be frustrated (never say “bored” — it tends to be viewed as if you’d said, “I think you’re a rotten teacher with a stupid curriculum”), it’s a bit tricky. I don’t think it’s productive to frame high intelligence as a disability, unless you happen to be in a public school in one of the few states that treats giftedness as part of the larger special education umbrella. This conversation is not one in which political theory is appropriate. But you can say things like, “He is a curious and eager learner, and it’s sometimes hard for him to manage his frustration when he’s not able to feed that.”
3d. If you aren’t comfortable with your own ability to explain the issues, try bringing one, maybe two at the most, short articles written for a general audience. But my experience has been that this is not the moment to give them paperwork, much less homework. Your goal is to establish a relationship with this helping professional. (If people have particular articles they like, feel free to suggest them in comments below… I will put up a few I have suggested in the past to clients with various issues.)
4. He is bright and highly motivated. When he isn’t sure what to do, he tries to do something that makes sense to him — it’s just sometimes the wrong thing. Wry gently-self-deprecating laughter helps a lot here, because you want to communicate that…
5. You are aware of the issues and you have been working on them on an ongoing basis. If you had a formal evaluation done, say so. If there has been any professional intervention, say so. You don’t need to give details, just, “He’s been working with a therapist for the last year or so, and we’ve found it very helpful,” or, “We had a comprehensive evaluation done about two years ago.” (And be prepared to share the report or sign a release to have them chat briefly with the therapist, even if you don’t think they’re going to follow through.) It shows that you’re serious about dealing with the issues you’re talking about and that you’re not expecting the person you’re speaking with to create miracles or to tolerate everything forever. I often find myself saying, “She didn’t get this way overnight, and it’s not going to all be fixed overnight either.”
6. But, of course, all professionals who work with kids this age have seen plenty who aren’t perfect in their ability to avoid nasal pea-stuffage or whatever, and you know that experienced professionals like them probably see lots of other kids who need a little extra guidance to make sure that the day runs smoothly. This should not sound sarcastic and you should not think of it as sarcastic.
7. You absolutely would like to be informed if there are any concerns or bumps in the road. You want to present clear and consistent messages to him about what is okay and what is not okay, and you want to be supportive of the professionals. This is key. You. are. their. partner. You’re not going to get all defensive if they call you and say, “Fredwina had a rough day.” You’re going to talk with them and problem-solve. What you don’t want is something I’ve seen way too many times: “We have been having problems with this all year and now we’re completely fed up, and by the way your child is not welcome back in our school / has failed the entire course / etc.”
8. If there are strategies which are particularly effective or ineffective, share them. In particular, I’ve found that school folk tend to react to most stressful situations by trying to control them, telling the kid what to do in a louder and more directive way and brooking less and less delay before expecting immediate compliance. (Bad combination with most kids I know, especially the gifted kids — they tend to respond to these attacks on their autonomy by trying to, er, reassert their autonomy.) Instead, say what does work: “Recognize that he’s not trying to be oppositional, so if you can remind him gently to stop and think things through, that often works. He responds best to a warm coaching style.” “She sometimes forgets what the rules are, but if you ask her a question that reminds her of the rules, even better if you let her use a cue card we can send in with her, that really helps, and we’ve found that she learns better if we get her to be the one who remembers.”
9. Invite them to preview their own concerns — how they could imagine the issues you described playing out in their own environment, and what approaches they have found helpful in the past in similar situations with similar kids. Validate each other’s concerns and each other’s experience — you know a lot about your kid, but they also know a lot about kids in general and may in fact have quite a lot to bring to the table. If they don’t, let them save face anyhow. Don’t worry about proving anything to them or being right. Your goal is to evoke the helpful problem-solving response and to validate that effort, regardless of how effective you think it’s going to be. They may seem not concerned enough right now — don’t worry about it. If the call in a few weeks is, “Wow, Mom, I thought you were overexaggerating, but you really meant it!” you and the professional can share a laugh and then get on to problem-solving together.
The entire conversation should be no more than five minutes — ten at the absolute maximum — and should be warm and friendly on both sides.
If you get a nasty, intolerant, push-back, maybe-he-shouldn’t-be-here response, which I certainly have seen happen in some instances (but honestly, is much rarer than most of you are probably assuming!), recognize that a professional who cannot tolerate having the above conversation with you in a calm and productive way probably could not tolerate having any conversation about this topic in any calm and productive way. If they cannot cope with that conversation, then chances are good that nothing you or I or anyone else could have done would have improved the situation. And that is not useless — you have now learned something important which you’re going to take into account in your planning.
Do your best, let the professionals do their best, and recognize that none of these relationships will last forever. If some of these experiences are going to be more about helping your kid learn to tolerate people who aren’t themselves very good at their jobs, then fine, that’s still an important learning experience.
And now I’m going to finish filling out that paperwork for Laughing Boy.
really actually not dead, and might even be able to blog again
Hi folks! No, I didn’t fall off the face of the earth. But I’ve gotten at least a bit further through the backlog of work such that I’m willing to spend my time on the blog for a bit. It often happens that I write something for a specific person and then realize that it’s something I tell a lot of people often, so I go ahead and blog about it. The next post is one of those things….
testing, testing, one, two, three
Testing. It’s become so much part of the life of a learner or a teacher, at any age. And it’s a fascinating topic.
Okay, I’m one of those weird people who thinks of test-taking myself as a sort of competitive athletic event, one at which I’m really quite good even while thinking that the vast majority of tests I’ve ever taken were nearly completely pointless. No, that’s not my impostor syndrome kicking in. It has to do with a central concept in test design, which I’ll explain below.
What I love most about assessment is how useful it can be when done well. One of my colleagues says that testing doesn’t bring out the best in people, it doesn’t bring out the worst in people, but it brings out the most in people. We put you in a situation where your normal compensatory strategies for getting along in the world aren’t going to work. As Peter Ossorio says, when you ask a person to do something they can’t do, they’ll do something they can do. You’ll figure out something to do, the best you can, and what you do will be a reflection, in some way, of you. It’s like science — each test is an experiment that you and I do together. No one bit of data proves anything by itself, but when we put things together and look for themes, consistencies, divergences, a story begins to emerge, and it often does so surprisingly quickly.
But what bugs me is how little most folks understand about tests of all stripes — most importantly, how they’re built, how they work, what they’re good for… and what they aren’t. So what I’d like to do is to kick off a random-access series of posts on various aspects of assessment, including ordinary classroom tests, high-stakes testing for No Child Left Behind Allowed Ahead (also known as No Teacher Left Standing) and other similar “accountability” movements, bubble tests like the dreaded SAT and its ilk, and, of course, my favorite, the one-on-one kinds of tests used for special education and other diagnostic work, the kind that seriously geeky people like me give. Those include cognitive tests, neuropsychological tests, academic tests, psychological tests, behavioral questionnaires, and other fun stuff. I’ll start there because, well, because I like them and I think they’re really pretty interesting. I’ll try to chew off manageable chunks to talk about, and over time, I hope people learn something.
The most serious and popular misconception I encounter is a fundamental misunderstanding of what tests can do. They’re not magic, and neither are those of us who give them magicians. We’re just very observant (or at least we’re supposed to be!), and we’re using them to make a series of structured observations.
Again, this is like science. When I was training as a molecular biologist, one of the things I had thwacked into my head (through reading in the literature some of the truly impressively weird things that happened when people didn’t remember it) was that no experiment ever tells you anything about the real world. It tells you what happened on that day when that person did that experiment in that way. You might use that information to conjecture about the nature of the real world based on your data, and over time, as you build up more data, you can get a better and better sense of what the real world might be like. But you might see a different experiment, claiming to answer the same question, where you get different results. Uh, oh. Where do you look, to figure out what was going on to find the difference that made the difference? In the Materials and Methods, the specifics of how the experiment was designed and constructed. Very often, that’s where the difference lies. You cannot separate data from the experiment that generated it.
Same with assessment. No test, no matter how beautifully it’s designed, how skillfully it’s administered, and how insightfully it’s interpreted, can possibly tell you anything incontrovertibly true about the real human being. The test tells you what that person did on that day on that test with that tester in that environment. It might reflect something probably true about the person, but you have to stay humble with your interpretation.
Since you will always value what you measure, it makes sense to think very carefully about how to measure what you actually value. In education, we talk about the idea of “alignment” — we’d say that this test is or is not well-aligned to the skills we want the student to be able to demonstrate. That’s what I was talking about above, why I don’t respect the very bubble tests that I tend to be able to blow out of the water. They typically test what is easy to measure, but not what a thoughtful professional would consider all that valuable. At the conclusion of many thousands of hours of clinical training, psychologists in most states have to take a detailed fact-recall bubble test covering basically the entire field. We to prove that we know which classic theorist suggested that you were running from the bear because you were afraid, versus which one suggested that you were afraid because you were running from the bear. But we don’t have to demonstrate the capacity to actually manifest any clinical competencies with actual, oh, I dunno, human beings in distress. In test design, we talk about the very-closely-related concept of “validity,” which comes in many flavors. In this case, the construct validity of the test — how it defines what it is that it’s trying to measure — is awful. Fact knowledge within a domain is a useful thing, and might be a good prerequisite to beginning clinical work. But the public is not protected from incompetent psychologists by choosing only those who can remember the facts printed in their textbooks.
I think the best-aligned test I ever took was the qualifying exam for the Ph.D. I didn’t get in cancer biology. I was required to dive in to fields I was unfamiliar with, learn about the prior research in those fields, and propose new lines of research that would answer important unanswered questions. Minus the speed with which I had to do it (three of these, in completely different fields, within a single week!), this test was testing very much what I would need to do if I became a principal investigator running my own lab someday. Of course, the alignment/construct validity of that test wasn’t perfect either. What it didn’t explore was the personality traits which set me up to be a very sad and bored and frustrated person in the lab, the precise difference between thinking about science, which I love and am good at, and doing bench science on a day-to-day basis, which I don’t and am not.
What I find most concerning about the high-stakes testing (aka “accountability”) movement in education is that it tends to use tests with poor validity in a variety of domains (construct validity, content validity, and predictive validity being the most notable), and that it tends to ignore other underlying methodological differences between comparison groups (most notably, differences in the populations being served and the resources available to teachers and administrators to serve them, but also differences in how various jurisdictions define their goals and standards). When science teachers teach kids about experimental controls, we start with the idea of a “fair game.” But there’s no way on earth that these “games” are fair. There’s nothing truly “standardized” about these experiments, and almost every interpretation that is made of them is a massive overinterpretation from inadequate data. Gives serious testing a bad name. Harrumph.
Okay, so my plans for this series of posts right now involve topics like the various types of validity and reliability (the twin pillars of assessment for people who actually want usable data!), and a sort of overview of each of the major types of clinical testing (e.g., cognitive, academic, neuropsychological, behavioral, projective) and what they are and aren’t good for. I’ll do classroom and educational and high-stakes stuff later, but I’d rather start with what I do the most of. If there are specific ideas or questions you’d like me to address, feel free to drop them in the comments area here.
coming up for air
Okay, I’m still swamped, but a little less so than I’ve been. Those of you who know me personally know that I lost a lot of concentration and work time over the course of the last several months when both my grandfather and aunt became ill and died within two weeks of each other, and various other stressful events rippled through my personal and professional network. Blogging needed to go very far down my priority list. I really appreciate the kind thoughts and words and gestures which have come to me backchannel. But I think I’m able to put a little bit of time in here… so hello, again!
I’m not usually political on this blog, but… (thoughts on mental illness and culpability of public figures)
Oh, look, here we go again.
Public figures, folks in positions of leadership and authority, present their violent fantasies, talking about their political enemies as evil, dangerous, deserving of death, etc. They often suggest methods that would be way-cool, too, and talk about how great it would be to “take decisive action” or somesuch. Over and over again. In loud voices, using all of their charisma.
(I will refrain from calling out specific speakers and specific incidents here, because it is wrong no matter who does it, and because I do not want this blog to degenerate into a pointless debate about the minutiae of precisely who said precisely what and whether that counts. The specific tragedy that occurred today is just the latest instantiation.)
Lots of folks say, “Oh, that’s awful! Don’t go around inciting violence!”
The speakers respond, “Oh, come on, can’t you take a joke? I was only speaking figuratively! That’s just political rhetoric! I’m not really telling people to go out and do those things! And besides, other people are doing it, too! And I’m not really an authority figure anyhow, because, after all, I’m just an entertainer, or a candidate, or a humble religious leader, or a Citizen Just Like You.” Right, because we all happen to have hundreds, thousands, or millions of people listening to us on the TV/radio/internet/lectern/pulpit.
Then someone does something awful: blows up a building, shoots a bunch of people, or otherwise takes violent action that looks rather like what that authority figure fantasized about.
And everyone is shocked! shocked, I say! Everyone, especially including the public figures themselves, decries the violence and does their best to distance themselves from the person who actually did the bad thing. The good news is that when we learn more about that person, we find out that they were a “crazy” “lone wolf.” They’ve often posted rambling and incoherent monologues on the internet or left other clear evidence of serious and persistent mental illness. Everyone titters and points and does their level best to say, “That person is nothing like me,” because thought disorders are scary. (I’m not being sarcastic. The idea that your own brain might turn on you is legitimately terrifying. But when we’re scared of something, one of our normal and natural defenses is to try to make it be as separate from us ourselves as possible.)
So hooray! The public figures are off the hook! They couldn’t possibly have predicted that some whack-job would have taken them seriously and done that awful thing. Those people aren’t like us. They can’t be held responsible for what those not-like-us-people might do, even if it was disturbingly like what they were talking about on the TV/radio/internet/lectern/pulpit.
Folks, the population incidence of schizophrenia is approximately 1%. One. per. cent. Think about that for a minute. Think about going into a movie theatre… or a house of worship… or a football game… Now think about the population of the country (or the world). Move the decimal place two spots to the left. That’s a lot of people struggling with serious and persistent mental illness, typically in overburdened systems that rarely manage to provide the kind of help they need. I’ve worked with folks who are seriously affected by these disorders — I have a great deal of compassion for them.
Let me be crystal clear — not all people with thought disorders are violent. In fact, the research data is quite clear that the overwhelming majority are not. (In fact, they are no more likely to be violent than the general public, although most people massively underestimate how violent the general public is). Even those few who are dangerous are rarely dangerous to people they don’t know. (That’s true of the general population, too, by the way — the overwhelming majority of victims of violence know their attackers well… they’re often closely related to them.)
But “knowing” someone in this case can include being introduced to them by, say, a public authority figure who talks about them a whole lot and tells you that they know all about this person who is evil and they know that this person should be killed and they create a concrete image of how that could be done and they repeat the message over and over again or have lots of friends who repeat similar messages. Especially if part of your thought disorder includes the relatively common symptom of believing that the TV/radio/internet/movie/music has a special message just for you. When you’re having a hard time holding onto reality and making it make sense, then those nice, simple, consistent messages getting repeated over and over can feel comforting.
While I’m on the subject of relatively-common-symptoms of thought disorders, let me also point out that the belief that you are somehow important, special, have a special mission to carry out, have to sacrifice yourself, have to save the world, etc… is also on the list. Ahem.
Folks like to hide behind the “abstract language” thing. I can’t agree. You may speak abstractly, sure, but you’re speaking to lots of people in the population who are not abstract thinkers. (Think about how frustrating it can be at the DMV, or with the TSA, or on a telephone support line, or any of the other situations that provoke the typical Xtranormal video.) And when someone has a thought disorder, they often become highly concrete and not-quite-logical in how they process language. Words don’t quite mean what they usually mean, sounds start meaning more than the words, sentences can start in one place and end someplace very different, language and logic can start to feel like one of those water-snake toys that keeps slipping out of your hands. Understanding the niceties of figurative language and hyperbole and rhetorical flourish from the public authority figure on the TV/radio/internet/lectern/pulpit, figuring out what they really mean…? Go ahead and look up the writings of any of these “lone crazies” and tell me if you think a person who has that little control over language and thought can tell when an authority figure’s comments about the nobility of sacrifice and the necessity of violence and all that are really just entertaining and clever words, and when they’re concrete calls to real-world action. I like to think I’m a good consumer of the subtleties of language, and I am often unsure of what the shouting heads really mean.
The saving grace is that most of us, most of the time, have an observing ego. We think about what we’re going to do at least a little bit before we do it, and we judge our planned actions in light of whether they conform to the usual rules of the culture, what the likely outcomes would be, and so forth. And most of us, most of the time, have enough executive functioning to inhibit the acting out of the planned actions we judge to be poor choices. When I hear about something despicable, when I’m angry or scared, I might think, “Gee, I wish I could just… <fill in some random violent fantasy>.” But I don’t then actually do it… at least not most of the time (grin). But serious mental illness can wreak havoc with those self-controls.
What really concerns me is when the same authority figures who claim that they couldn’t possibly have known that they were sooo powerful… seem to feed their own sense of power by watching other people (who have less in the way of observing ego and executive function) carry out their own violent fantasies. I have known a few individuals who seemed to thrive on the chaos they caused within a community. Metaphorically, they would throw bricks high up in the air. When the “brick” came down and hurt someone or caused some other form of contention, they’d be as shocked as everyone else — perhaps more so. But there was also the sly smile, the subtle recognition of their own power to have caused that. Heh. I wonder if some of these folks who seem so often to step over the lines of appropriate authority-figure behavior are being repeatedly reinforced by how much crisis, both actual and feared, that they cause. That’s a problem, because even telling them how powerful they are and reminding them that with power comes responsibility feeds the narcissism.
I’m not sure how we as a civil community can address that effectively, not when the ranting is what makes money. To a great extent, I think we all have to get serious with ourselves about how our own fantasies are being fed by the violent talk. Personally, I’ve noticed a few shows that I enjoy and typically agree with politically, but I start to feel that I am getting too much pleasure out of the implied combat. When I stop liking who I become when I listen to them, I vote with my ears and whatever ratings statistics I might happen to be contributing to. I have stopped listening to them.
So all this is why I can’t accept that “no one could have predicted.” No one could have predicted precisely which person would react to precisely which turn of violent-fantasy speech or imagery in precisely which way at precisely which time and kill precisely which people. The population is too large to be keeping tabs on every person to the level that would permit experts to make such predictions, and I personally would not want to live in a country that kept tabs on its citizens in such a fashion. But the idea that someone would react in some violent way at some point was extremely predictable. And in fact, in most of these cases, as in the tragedy this morning, the prediction was in fact made and ignored, made and pooh-poohed, made and shouted down. And in most of these cases, there was that little “heh” coming from the background as those who agreed with the violent fantasy got the pleasure of having their fantasy gratified by someone else.
Those who have the attention of the public, on the TV, shouting on the radio, posting on the internet, ranting from the secular lectern or preaching from the religious pulpit, all have a responsibility. The more people who listen to you, the more you tell them what to do, the more responsibility you have when they act on what you tell them. Some of the blood spatters on you, too.
Enough.
letters of recommendation — some tips
‘Tis the season… I get the polite-but-nervous phone calls for MIT applicants who are setting up their interviews (side note: if your alma mater does alumni interviews, and you’ve been thinking about it but haven’t tried it, try it! This is my 12th year doing it, and it’s always fun and interesting to get to meet the kids), and, from parents and kids, I’m getting questions about how to handle the whole letter of recommendation thing. I’ve also just gone through a six-year period of my life in which I had to be the recommendee on a yearly basis. Ugh. And I’ve been both a writer of letters and on admissions committees reading them. All sides of the desk.
I also know that, well, let’s say this nicely… sometimes it’s hard for kids to hear stuff from their parents that might seem like common sense, and sometimes it’s easier to hear it from someone else. So, let me offer a few tips.
Numero uno. I know, this might sound dorky. But really. Make it easy and pleasant for the person writing the letter. It may be part of their job (and, by the way, many people who write letters as part of their jobs, myself included, quite enjoy doing it), but it’s still a favor you’re asking, and it does take time. (If you cannot listen to anything non-Machiavellian, then at least remember that people who are happy write more positive letters than those who are grouchy.) If you’re applying to a large number of schools, particularly if there are lots of annoying forms they have to do along with their letter, be extra-nice about it. For those who like scripts, I like to use phrases like, “Would you be willing to…?” “I really appreciate your offering to…”
Unless you are in one of those awful situations where the school dictates exactly who has to write the letters, choose intelligently. Recent is good. Long period of contact with you is good. Contact with you in some in-depth collaborative endeavor is excellent. Someone who can make it clear that you didn’t just do whatever it was that you were doing because you thought it would look good on your resume, someone who can talk about how they observed you persistently pursuing your passions, is terrific. Long experience in the field is nice (some forms ask), but not a crucial thing. If you happen to have a recommender who is a big name in the field, such that the recipient will know who it is and that getting that person to make a recommendation at all is meaningful, then that’s nice. But a big-name highly-experienced recommender who had very little contact with you and can’t say much in detail about you is not as useful as a run-of-the-mill recommender who knows you well and who can speak in detail about you.
Ask not just if they are willing to write a letter, but if they are willing to write a strong letter. A mealy-mouthed recommendation is a huge double-whammy, because it both says the kinda-sorta-okay things about you while everyone else is getting positive recommendations, and because it suggests that either you didn’t have any better choices, or that you didn’t realize that this recommender didn’t think as highly of you as you might have thought they did. If there’s a particular area of concern, something you know the recommender might want to say or have to say about you that is less than complimentary, bring it up directly, and talk with them about how (or whether) it could be presented in an honest but not awful way. If they cannot write you a good recommendation, it’s okay to part ways politely (I had a kid once who insisted that I write a recommendation, despite my clear statement that I would not be able to fail to mention her frequent, severe, and admittedly intentional disruptions of my class. Weird choice.). You are not asking the recommender to lie or in any way misrepresent their perspective — that would be unethical. But you need to know where you stand. Although this may be a one-time thing for you, it’s not a one-time thing for the recommender. The school gets to know recommenders over time, and recommenders who are unreliable, who tell them candidates are terrific when they aren’t, lose credibility. Plus, being aware of your weaknesses (in the shrink biz, we like to call them “growing edges” — doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy?) and being able to speak about them honestly, thoughtfully, and nondefensively is itself a good thing that a recommender might mention in a letter.
At the college level or before, most recommenders will not offer to share the letter with you. As you move further up the food chain, it becomes more typical for letters to be shared and even, in very good relationships, to be collaboratively edited. If someone does offer to share it, that’s very sweet, and can go a long way towards reducing the I-don’t-know-what’s-inside-that-secret-envelope anxiety. Say an extra thank you for that if they do it, but don’t ask them to if they don’t do it spontaneously. Similarly, I do come down on the side of checking the “I waive the right to see this letter” box — if they want you to see it, they will show you a copy anyhow. I know some folks probably disagree with me on this, but it just feels like a covert, “If I don’t get in, I might see if you wrote something less-than-perfect about me and I might Take Retributive Action of Some Kind.” Fundamentally, if you don’t feel you can trust the recommender, don’t ask them for a letter in the first place. This is one of those areas where it really pays to listen to the niggling feelings in your gut. (Been there, done that myself. No, I won’t put the details on the web.)
What’s much more typical at all levels is for recommenders to ask you what you’d like them to focus on in the letter, and/or for a copy of your resume or curriculum vitae, and/or for a description of what you’re applying for and what you think they’re looking for, what attracts you about it, why you think you’re a good match, etc. That doesn’t have to be well-written — a simple bullet list is just fine. As both a candidate and a writer of letters, I like this system a lot. It makes the writing process easier for the recommender, and it enables the candidate to make sure that the recommender doesn’t forget or misunderstand what the candidate thinks is important.
In fact, it’s a good idea to have already thought about all that before you start asking people. It’s nice to be able to put together a group of recommenders who can each speak well to a different aspect of your wonderfulness. If a recommender doesn’t ask for information, ask them “if there’s any information that would help you.” If they say no thank you, don’t worry about it. It very likely just means that they feel confident in terms of what they would want to say about you to that audience.
Yes, you might have numerous forms for them to fill out. If you’re applying to a ridiculously large number of places, (1) reconsider whether you really need to do that (2) warn the recommender ahead of time before they agree to write for you (3) say a huge thank-you both at the time and later on if they agree. Many recommenders will write a single letter on their own letterhead and attach it to the forms, doing only the minimal checkboxes or sometimes ignoring the form altogether. That’s generally no big deal. Admissions offices understand that recommenders are not the applicants, so they give them a fair bit more slack in terms of being perfect with the paperwork.
Logistically, make things as completely easy as you can for them. Fill out everything you’re supposed to fill out. Pre-address all of the envelopes to individual colleges for them. If the recommender is supposed to mail them to you, so that you can submit your recommendations in a single packet with your application, provide the recommender with a self-addressed large envelope to stick them all in and mail them back to you. Include plenty of postage — assume that the recommender will have both the form from the school and a separate letter on letterhead, so a large packet of envelopes might add up to more ounces than you expect. Frankly, I usually just spring for a priority-mail flat-rate envelope.
If the recommender is supposed to send them directly, then you’re fine with one stamp per envelope. Also, inside each pre-addressed-to-the-college pre-stamped envelope, include a self-addressed pre-stamped 4×6″ card with the name of the school and the recommender on it, and a nice note asking the admissions office to drop the card in the mail to you when they receive it. It’s an easy and cheap way to be sure that things got where they were going. (I use the same system with the applications themselves, or at least use a trackable / delivery confirmation method for mailing them. Things don’t get lost in the mail often, but it’s nice to know about it ASAP if they do!) If they’re supposed to use any online system to submit the recommendations, I think it’s nice to write clear directions for them and offer to help them if there are any technical glitches. Don’t assume that your recommenders are as comfortable with computers as you are, unless you have good reason to think so. The good news with the online systems is that you can generally track what’s been submitted and what hasn’t.
Give the recommender a lot of lead time — a month is good, two months if you can manage it. You’re making a major life decision here — procrastinating until the last minute isn’t a good move. Colleges are usually slightly flexible with recommendation deadlines (shh!), because they know it’s usually not your fault if the recommender is a day or two late, but remember that you don’t want a grumpy hassled person feeling pressured to write a letter for you at the last minute.
If you’re getting close to the deadline and they haven’t written them yet, it’s okay to nudge gently. My script is, “Hi, just checking in… just wanted to find out what your timeline was, in case you forgot…” And smile nicely and be really super-nice about it. Think about how nice you have to be when correcting a teacher… and then triple that. Yes, they’re letting you down. And you have to take it. Yes, it’s not fair. Resolve that when you’re the recommender, you won’t do that to kids. And don’t. even. think. about. getting. mad. where. they. can. see. If they appear likely to miss the deadline by any substantial amount of time, give them a graceful way out — “I know you’re really busy. Would you prefer that I ask someone else?” (Yes, I have a personal horror story here, too, which, again, I will not share with the intertubes.)
If you are a young-for-grade applicant, either because you skipped grades a while back, because you’re in some form dropping out of high school to go to college, because you’re homeschooling, or for whatever reason… all of this required professionalism goes double for you. If you’re getting letters of recommendation written for you, then you’re entering the phase of life where “really amazing for his age” needs to start being replaced by “really amazing, period.” If you’re not good enough on an objective scale to get in to whatever you’re trying to get into, then you don’t get extra credit or a bye or anything for being young when you try. Same with the letters — there’s going to be a presumption on the part of the reader that you’re “normal” for your age and hence immature as compared to other applicants. If the recommender can’t say honestly that you’re on a par (or better) maturity-wise with the other kids they write letters for, then you run a risk of being portrayed as “mature for her age,” which is the same thing as “not as mature as the older kids.”
Overall, your goal is to help your recommenders feel terrific about the whole experience. Let them see that you can handle the whole situation in a professional, responsible, adult fashion. And send a warm and personal thank you note afterwards. Chocolates and flowers aren’t necessary, unless you had them write an inordinate number of the darned things. It’s very anxiety-provoking, but if you choose well, realizing what others are willing (or even eager) to say about you can be tremendously validating.
I’m not dead yet!
(just in case anyone is wondering, I am still blogging. Or rather, I’m still trying to get “real” work done so I can feel okay making time to blog. But I’m still here. I have an article that I’ve been writing in the tiny bits of time between clients at the clinic, which I hope to post before it’s out-of-season.)