Timeline for What should a student do if a professor agrees to write recommendation, then retracts offer upon realizing he confused the student with someone else?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 19, 2015 at 20:30 | vote | accept | kitty | ||
| Jan 15, 2015 at 22:41 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | I dunno, in my experience most professors are really tactful, so in some cases it's hard to tell that a professor doesn't like you. At any rate the student may have been poorly advised. For instance maybe he thought he should ask the most famous professor he knew, or the one whose class was most relevant to his intended field of study, etc. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 22:32 | comment | added | Nick S | "Maybe the student actually thinks the professor likes him for some reason, or he knows he did poorly in the class but he did even worse in other people's classes. " <---Sorry, I completely disagree... You should never ask from a letter from a professor if the only interaction is negative...And if the only recommendation letter one can get is a negative letter, then one should know better than ask... | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 22:24 | comment | added | Nick S | Ben the attitude is not "how dare he ask for a letter" but is puzzlement: "why would he ask for a letter given the circumstances". There is no way he can get a good letter.... | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 21:41 | comment | added | paul garrett | Ben, I think people were mostly saying that it was operationally not even remotely sensible for the student to ask, since there could have been no reasonable expectation of a helpful letter. A merely less-awful letter is still fatal, for almost any purpose. The anger is hard to figure out, because I cannot visualize what the student thought would happen, either way. I think this particular question was not too much about the (enormous, occasionally abused) power differential. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 21:33 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | Oh, I didn't say he should write the letter; in fact, it is good that he didn't. I just don't like the attitude of "how dare the student ask for a letter," "the student tried to deceive the professor on purpose," and "the professor is always right." Not just on this thread, but in general. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 21:22 | comment | added | paul garrett | "Basic courtesy" is not "writing a good letter when none is merited". Sure, there is a huge power asymmetry, and power is often abused, that does not seem to be a dominant feature here, or even entering at all. Sure, the situation is awkward, but letter writers should not allow themselves to be coerced by embarrassment into giving false references. Again, "I'm terribly sorry, I stupidly thought you were someone else... when I agreed to write a letter." is a civil response. How can the student be "angry"? "Disappointed", conceivably, but even that seems to require a disconnect from reality. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 20:41 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | @choener: I would not call this an "abuse of power," but it's symptomatic of the general attitude that because someone is a powerful professor, they need not show basic courtesy to their students. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 20:10 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | There are lots of reasons. Maybe the student actually thinks the professor likes him for some reason, or he knows he did poorly in the class but he did even worse in other people's classes. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 20:09 | comment | added | choener | The argument in the 1st paragraph and the comments borders on ridiculous. The was no abuse of power on the side of the Prof. It is the student who clearly doesn't know how to behave. And it is the student who should have apologized for his behaviour (the student was naughty in multiple classes ...). | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:50 | comment | added | Nick S | You are right: the professor owes something to the student: a bad reference letter. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:49 | comment | added | Nick S | There is a huge difference between refusing to hurt the student and treating the student as shit. And the prevailing opinion on the side is not "how dare the student ask for a letter from me" but "why would the student ask for a reference letter when he should expect a negative one"... | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:46 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | @fkraiem You're right, the professor may have apologized, in which case I think it's the best he can do in this unfortunate situation. Also, the student definitely should not have complained to the department head. It just bugs me that the prevailing opinion on this site is that the professor doesn't owe the student anything, even an acknowledgement of his mistakes. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:43 | comment | added | fkraiem | There is nothing in the question implying the professor did not apologise. If someone here fails to be a decent human being, it is student B, who apparently has difficulty taking no for an answer, regardless of how it is presented. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:40 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | IMO this is symptomatic of a larger trend in academia where professors feel entitled to treat their students like shit. Because they have so much power, they can easily get away with treating students however they want to, so they forget to act like decent human beings much of the time (and often they've internalized it so much that they don't know they're doing it). I am very fortunate to have found an advisor who is not a shithead, and this fact alone makes me enthusiastically sing his praises to all new students in my department | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:34 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | It is certainly a reasonable mistake to make, but that doesn't mean the professor didn't make the mistake, and it's pretty standard to apologize for accidents. Actually I'm pretty dumbfounded that the prevailing opinion on this site is "how DARE the student ask for a letter from ME" rather than "yeah the professor screwed up, he should apologize for accidentally misleading the student." | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:28 | comment | added | paul garrett | I must confess that I would have been unable to imagine that the requestor was the "bad" student, but instead would have powerfully presumed that it was the "good" student... and would have been dumbfounded for many reasons if/when the "bad" student showed up at my door. For one, I would have been completely confused as to what such a student imagined I'd write in a letter for them. In particular, it would baffle me if they claimed that they'd thought that I could somehow write a non-fatal letter, based on reality. I'd "apologize" in only the most perfunctory way... srsly... | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:14 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | Making clerical errors does not absolve a professor of being a decent human being. If I were B I would expect at least an apology for reneging on the promise, regardless of the professor's reason for reneging. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:09 | comment | added | Ben Bitdiddle | (1) The professor said he would do something for B and didn't. (2) B may not have known about the student A with the same name, and therefore believed that the professor was genuinely willing to write the letter (after all, he said he would). (3) B may not have expected a stellar letter, but still thought his letter would be better than the other letters he could have secured. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:03 | comment | added | paul garrett | I don't understand how a sane student could be made about this situation! Could there have been any reasonable expectation that the prof would write a positive letter based on bad behavior and bad performance? A @DanielWessel commented, most likely the prof figured it was the other (good...) student of the same name. | |
| Jan 15, 2015 at 19:00 | history | answered | Ben Bitdiddle | CC BY-SA 3.0 |