Recommendation Season

It's that time of year again - time for writing recommendation letters for high school seniors. My first year here I got off pretty easy. I was still just building the foundation of my relationships with my students and hadn't known them all that long yet. Also, I didn't teach any of the senior class that year. The only recommendation I had to write my first year was for a 9th grader transferring to the top international high school in China. She had to have a letter from a math teacher.

My second year, I wrote a handful of recommendations, including one to MIT. Theee MIT. Intense.

My third year, I wrote a few more recommendations, because by that point, I'd taught several of the graduating seniors in previous years. I even wrote one for KAIST, the top engineering school in Korea (and 21st in the world).

I know I'm going to be inundated this year. I've taught every single person in this year's senior class a minimum of 2 years in their core math classes, but I've also taught some for longer and some for multiple classes in multiple years. Right now, I'm writing a recommendation for Stanford. I've got two more pending when I finish this one.

I hate writing recommendations. Especially to ivy league schools. It is a tremendous amount of pressure. Siiiigh... But I love my students. So I'll do it for them.