Teachable Moments

LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION FOR BAD STUDENTS

THE PROBLEMOver the years, I have agonized about what to do when bad students ask for letters of recommendation. The cartoon brings all this back to me, and I wish to comment, including my solution.

First, I think I have a problem with this because (a)I am a nice guy and do not like to turn away people/students asking for help and (b) another way of looking at it, is that, in the past, I have not been assertive enough to turn down students who do not deserve a letter of recommendation from me.

In the past, I would write a letter of recommendation, regardless of how bad I thought the student was, or, the most typical problem, regardless of how little I knew about them. Often, it was a student who had been in my class but who I did not remember or barely recalled. Perhaps they had made a C in my class. I would write a vaguely supportive, brief letter of recommendation.

MY SOLUTIONMy solution now is to tell them I do not know enough about them to write a good letter. I have become more assertive. Or, perhaps more mean. Either way, I stopped writing letters of recommendation for students I did not feel I could recommend.

KICKED OUT OF SCHOOLBut, recently, I had a problem which I did not handle in the assertive way, but it worked out all right. A student came to me who had performed so poorly, academically, that he had been kicked out of school. He had been in my Introduction to Psychology class and asked me to write a letter, asking the university to readmit him. Although I did not remember him (from a class of 60 students)he said “You could say in it that you saw something in me.” I asked him what grade he made in my class and he said “I don’t remember. I think a D or an F.” For some reason I did not reject his request. I said “You are making it hard on me. It would be a lot easier if you had made an A. Or, at least a B.” He replied “Yeah.” I told him I would write some kind of letter. I did. I did not say I saw something in him, but I did interview him and find out that he had family (marriage, new baby) and work responsibilities which could possibly mitigate his bad academic performance some, and found out some other positive qualities about him to mention, and which made me feel that it might be justifiable to support his getting readmitted to school.

READMITTEDTo my surprise, he got readmitted to the university. He saw me when I ate at a restaurant where he was the waiter and he insisted on paying my check. So, at least I got rewarded some for being nice. But, had I done a bad thing in helping a poor student get readmitted to school?

I recently found out he got accepted to graduate school. I had thought I made a mistake, but now I think I probably did the right thing. So, how do we know when a “bad student” is redeemable or not? And, why did I write the letter for him? I do not know. Perhaps I saw something in him, at least after interviewing him.

Russell Eisenman, Ph.D. Department of Psychology University of Texas-Pan AmericanEdinburg, TX 78539-2999 (new zip code)

E-mail: eisenman@utpa.edu