Just as the requests for letters are coming in this week (three in the past two days), Scribbling Woman points to this all-too-familiar piece by David Galef in Inside Higher Ed–”My 57th Recommendation Letter”

I wish to recommend Daryl Smith for entry into your graduate program, and I have twenty more of these goddamned letters to write. Daryl is easily one of the best twenty students I recall teaching this semester, and I’ve probably written recommendations for seventeen of them already. Daryl was in one of my composition classes, I feel sure of that, since that’s all they let me teach.

[snip--but read the rest. It's worth it!]

Best end with some boilerplate. Any institution that accepts Derwood will definitely have gained another student.

When I write them, they’re nothing like this…oh no, not at all!

I really do try to take them seriously, and do my best to make them meaningful…but I sure do wonder if anyone really reads them that way!