I've been told I write excellent letters of recommendation and reference. On what basis, I'm not sure. Do they like my prose style? My wit and erudition? Or do my letters get people what they want?
Whatever the case, I think the best letter is one I wrote for someone I bumped into the other day.
Juanita was back in town for the funeral of a relative. She was a student in a remedial class I taught nearly a decade ago. Every one of us who taught her thought she was a "great kid;" however, we had our doubts that she'd make it through college. She wasn't stupid, and she had a better work ethic than most students. Some said she simply wasn't
"scholastic;" I was sure that her poor school performance was the result of dyslexia and possibly other learning disabilities, though I have no training in diagnosing them. In any event, she seemed to understand what I said in class and was a surprisingly good writer. Still, she performed disastrously on tests and was generally not a very good student.
I bumped into her in a diner just a couple of blocks from where I live. (Ironically, we were practically neighbors when she was my student!) I knew that she'd gotten married and moved away. That was good for her because, even though she was not living in a hell-hole of a neighborhood, at the time I taught her, she had lived in no other place but the one in which she was born and raised.
She had just barely passed the course in which she was my student and the university competency exam that followed. I was happy for her: If I recall correctly, it was the second or third time she took both. A semester or two later, she left the university. She continued to work as a cashier in a nearby supermarket, as she had done since she was in high school.
About two years after she passed that class, she asked me to write a letter of recommendation for her. She wasn't trying get readmitted to the university in which I taught her, and she wasn't trying to transfer to another college. Instead, she had decided on a new direction: She wanted to become a massage therapist.
Something told me that it was exactly the right thing for her. She is a very sensitive and nurturing person; other students in the class and the college talked to her about their boyfriends and girlfriends, their abusive families and spouses and any number of other things that were on their minds. They, and other people, said they felt "safe" with her; although I am not a religious person, I found myself thinking of her as a kind of "faith" healer. To put it in more secular, though still un-scientific, terms, she is empathetic and intuitive.
I hadn't the first idea of what sort of qualities a school of massage therapy sought in its candidates for admission. I did some research; still, I felt that in whatever I wrote, I would simply be "mouthing the words," so to speak. But my own intuition--such as it is--told me that Juanita had found her "calling," or whatever you want to call it.
Plus, the school she wanted to attend is located in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York--about a five-hour drive from where she lived. I thought it might be good for her to be in an environment where she knew no one and where, therefore, no one would have any preconceptions of her. At the same time, it wouldn't be difficult for her to get back to her family, who are very close-knit, in case of an emergency.
I tried, to no avail, to find a copy of the letter I wrote for her. And I don't remember what, exactly, I said in it, other than that she's a sensitive person who doesn't give up. But I don't think I ever had more enthusiasm for writing a letter of recommendation for anyone else, not even the "best" students I've had.
I also don't think I was ever happier for any former student of mine than I was for her when she was accepted into that massage therapy school. Of course, I would love to see other people share my love of writing, literature and the other arts and, if they are so inclined, to make their livings through them. But, in spite of all the anger I sometimes feel over some of the experiences I've had, I want to see people happy and doing things that suit them without mortgaging the rest of their lives. I don't think I've ever been more certain that any of those things happened as I was when Juanita got that acceptance letter.
Well, all right, I'm just as certain of that now, having seen her again for the first time in several years. Thankfully--for her, at any rate--she didn't buy into the notion that she had to spend more years in an academic institution to be a successful person with a fulfilling career and life.
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