By Donald Wright
As a professor for 31 years, I wrote a lot of letters of recommendation for students I’d had in class. Frequently, this required my needing to search hard for something positive to write or to put a positive “spin” on a rather mundane or spotty record. I did my best.
In my spare time I used to fool around, penning fake letters of recommendation that exaggerated such efforts. An example of those letters follows.
Mr. Glen Steinhagen, Principal
Spring Street Middle School
17 Spring Street
Merlyville, OH 43726
May 20, 2020
Dear Mr. Steinhagen:
Maryann Drake, whom you may know by one of her nicknames—“Glitter” perhaps, or “Grandma Toke”—has asked me to write a letter of recommendation supporting her application for your eighth-grade social studies teaching position. Caught by surprise, I could not think quickly of an excuse not to do so. So here it is.
For the record, I have known Ms. Drake for only one semester, as a student in my remedial class of basic United States history, though I have seen her in the halls on repeated occasions, talking loudly or making strange noises with one hand cupped in her armpit while flapping the free arm. Recently, I noticed her exhibiting her admirable sensitivity to environmental issues by berating a janitor for not recycling one of the liquor bottles she had left in the ladies room. I have also read about some of her extensive extra-curricular activities, as well as how to reach her by phone, on the walls of the men’s lavatory.
Academically, Ms. Drake is what one might in fairness term solid, especially when it comes to formulation of an argument. Why, just last week in my class she got into an argument with one of her fellow students over the theory and practice of non-violence that resulted in the poor chap getting a bruised sternum and a severely chewed left ear. Ever gracious, Ms. Drake apologized for her aggressiveness and gave the injured lad a bandage with stars on it and a stick of sugarless gum.
I cannot comment on Ms. Drake’s writing ability, not because I did not assign any writing, but because I could not make heads or tails of anything she turned in. In fairness, she works on a word processing program that has a parental block so it will not print swear words, and she has found that a significant impairment in her regular mode of self-expression.
Personally, Ms. Drake makes up for her lack of hygiene by wearing tiny air-freshener earrings, which some find avant garde. Her mode of dress, which one of my colleagues labels “early bad taste,” is eclectic and entirely her own. More fashionable women commonly flock to sit next to her for the comparisons that are quickly drawn.
In terms of Ms. Drake being a role model for our youth, I should emphasize that the three DWI citations you are sure to turn up on any kind of basic web search were either the result of police officers not being sufficiently familiar with the tribulations of everyday life that bring one to abuse alcohol, or the heightened sensitivity to shots and beers one gains from taking antiretrovirals. I understand that one of the citations occurred after Ms. Drake, exhibiting her admirable concern for animals, deemed it prudent to back down a one-way street to tend to a housepet she had inadvertently run over at high speed. When sober, she is mild mannered and, some say, even gentile.
So I write this letter of recommendation for Ms. Drake, urging you to look long and hard at her application while keeping the following in mind: your hiring her would keep her off the streets during daylight hours, when “soliciting” is particularly frowned upon; would enable her to channel her
energies into something more constructive than watching soap operas and composing vulgar limericks; and would perhaps bring to an end her whining about the unfairness of “the system” and how she would have her name in lights by now if only so many jerks in positions like yours – though in honesty,
Mr. Steinhagen, she has not spoken of you by name – did not have it in for her.
Yours sincerely,
Bernard V. Trumble, Ph.D.
Professor of History
Merlyville State College
Donald R. Wright is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, Emeritus, at SUNY-Cortland. In 2005-06 he held the Mark Clark Chair of History at The Citadel. He is author of books on African, African-American, and Atlantic histories. Don and his wife Doris live in Beaufort.
