It's not that I never have anything good to say about the students or colleagues around me. For some people, I can write whole novellas. For others, it's a little slow-going, but I can start with bullet point and improvise for others. And then there's the others: the ones that no matter how hard you tried to get to know, to see what they do best (or worst), to find out more about them from other students/colleagues --- you somehow never got anywhere and when the time comes, you feel you can't honestly write type anything beyond platitudes and cliches and damning with faint praise.
To any former students reading this, I apologise for some of the crap I've ever written on your testimonials and progress reports. Whether I knew you well or not, I know I have sinned, for recently I paged through the last batch of testimonials I wrote, and damn there was some pretty crappy writing in there.
I wish I could make a resolution to write better recommendations/comments in future, but after this morning's struggle with just two forms, I'd better not make promises I can't keep. I stared blankly at the screen for a good half hour before scuttling plaintively to beg a colleague for three adjectives --- just three, please --- to get me started. (Fortunately, that did the trick.)
I have three more to do tomorrow...
4 Comments:
Most people err in the other direction when writing appraisals.
As in, they tend to write nicer things than they mean?
Rather, mean nicer things than they think
Gah. I know exactly what you mean. Resolve to speak in plain, pithy language the next time I have to write recommendations/performance reviews.
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