Confronting a teacher about a recommendation

[Poseur]

<p>

@vicariousparent

Poseur: This doesn’t answer your question, but here is some gratuitous relationship advice: He is your boyfriend and so you probably think highly of him. Maybe you (and he) have an implicit understanding that he is “better” than you, and you (and he) are disappointed that the teacher gives a higher numerical value to you than to him on a box.</p>

<p>My advice to you (both) is to not let other people’s opinion of you influence how you think of each other. People don’t know you like you know each other.</p>

<p>Good luck to both of you.

Thank you. </p>

<p>You see, I didn’t include the part about my getting a “Top 1%” rating overall in the original post because I wasn’t sure if it were relevant, and because I thought that people might be too hasty to include that part of the story in their evaluations of the situation. You’re right, though, that this IS an important part of this situation, in our case.</p>

<p>What you say is accurate to an extent; however, neither of us is presumptuous enough to assign ourselves values (especially in comparison to one another) for such personality traits as those on the CommonApp form. The only exception – the only thing on which we can both agree – is that relative to one another, he deserves a higher rating in “Leadership,” based on the activities that I mentioned in the first post. I do have positions in two clubs in which I’ve been heavily involved, but this teacher doesn’t even KNOW this, as I gave her my resume in the very beginning of the year, before I was elected to the positions. Yet she gave me a 5% in that category and gave him that obviously-intentional 10%… and neither of us can understand that. Perhaps I demonstrate more leadership in the classroom, depending on how she defines the trait, but neither of us can imagine what this definition could be.</p>

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@tkm256

Geeze louise. Looks like we have a lone wolf in the making. This is part of the reason health care in this country is facing a serious shortage of labor–institutions that provide education in medical fields have perpetuated this idea that physicians must be perfect perfect perfect. You know what it takes to get to medical school? Four years of joy-less, socially suffocated education, another four years of constant academic barrage, and still more years of sleep-deprived work-obsession before finally being able to enter the happy land of insurance claims and malpractice suits.

This seems a bit brash a generalization. I understand where you’re coming from, and I do see this stigma epitomized in some people based on my experience on this website and with those I know, but your words seem too strong to be accurate. I’m sure you’re aware that not EVERY pre-med student experiences “four years of joyless, socially suffocated education,” as no one would dare to assign such a description to such a vast amount of different human experiences, so I might just be picking on semantics here – but it bothers me that you speak in such absolutes.</p>

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@tkm256

Now, I’m all for top-of-the-line medical care, but what does this system gets us? A lot of book-smart physicians who don’t know how to relate to people or tell when enough is enough. Case in point: the OP’s boyfriend (as far as this single biased situation describes him). People think that in order to succeed as a health care provider, every little detail must be exactly as according to plan. “Only the top 10%? Oh no’s! All of my dreams will be shattered–I can’t just be better than /most/ people, I must be better than practically /everybody/, or no one will accept me. Must work work work to fix this.”

If you read my most recent additions to the thread, you’d see that my boyfriend acknowledged that he had overreacted. Really, my goal in posting this thread was to get feedback like this – to get people to say, you know, “hahahaha wow, I can’t believe he’s upset about such great ratings; that’s ridiuclous!!!” because, as I’m biased, my telling him that he was overreacting didn’t do much. He does feel much better after reflecting upon the situation and after seeing what others have to say about his exceptional ratings. </p>

<p>I admit that you are fairly accurate when you describe his mindset as: “I can’t just be better than /most/ people, I must be better than practically /everybody/, or no one will accept me.” My boyfriend is INCREDIBLY driven, and although he is not very competitive or concerned with “better than…everybody,” he always strives to be THE BEST POSSIBLE (which, in this situation, would be the “Top 1%” categorization.) Again, though, this isn’t about being better than others; he’s not that type of person at all. He competes only with the 100% mark.</p>

<p>Here’s an example that further demonstrates where he’s coming from: GPAs in my high school are calculated such that an 89.5% (which rounds to an ‘A’) is equivalent to any other ‘A,’ like a 105%. Moreover, one doesn’t have to get an ‘A’ every quarter to get an ‘A’ for the year, which goes into the cumulative GPA as a 4.0. As a result of this system, 13 people have 4.0s, and the class rankings are based on weighted GPA. My boyfriend has gotten an ‘A’ (and I assure you, always much closer to the 105% end of the spectrum than the 89.5%) every quarter; however, because of the fact that he didn’t stock up on worthless APs for the sake of his GPA (instead taking Latin 1 through 4 as electives, which are unweighted), he is rank 8 in our class. He was INCREDIBLY frustrated when he found out about this, because he has easily gotten the highest actual AVERAGE in the grade, yet all of his hard work has amounted to a (still very good) rank 8. This is the same way he felt when he received this evaluation – as if all of his hard work had come out to something that was still, by his standards, subpar. If I just told you, “My boyfriend was upset when he found out that he was ranked 8th in our class,” I’m sure that your knee-jerk reaction would be similar to what you posted – but can’t you understand, upon my elaboration, that he has a RIGHT to be frustrated? Frustrated with the system that encourages a student to strive for the 89.5% and in which the only two students who have gotten straight A’s EVERY SINGLE QUARTER are ranked 8 and ~10? Sorry if this seems irrelevant to the thread; I’m just trying to explain why I think that his “X isn’t good enough” attitude is sometimes justified, IMO.</p>

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@tkm256

Unfortunately, people in the health care industry are usually proud of their lone wolf status. They really shouldn’t be. Imagine what improvements could be made in national care if we could turn out nurses who actually care about people, and doctors who are psychologically stable enough (i.e. essentially happy with their professions and confident enough to appreciate others for their contributions, and don’t just view them as rungs on the ladder to prestige) to work well with others and relate to patients every once in a while. Or if people didn’t have to pay so much for medical school…all this was once a good way to weed out the chaffe and ensure that only the cream of the crop had scalpels placed in their hands. But now, with the aging of a significant portion of the population, as well as the popularization of higher education, it’s just a hindrance.

I am offended by this sweeping generalization about the medical industry, and I’m sure that your doctor would be, too. </p>

<p>…Do you REALLY think that doctors don’t care about their patients and just choose the profession for the prestige? You must have had some pretty horrible experiences, and I’m sorry. </p>

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@tkm256

Now, I know Poseur has officially abandoned this thread, but I must point out something about the entire situation: the young man in question wishes to be a physician. Imagine the hospital his future self works for is conducting an evaluation of his performance, and he receives less than top marks. Will he want to do what his instinct is to do now–go to his superiors and tell them how unfair their evaluation was? Demand that they change it before sending the results to Medicaid for funding? That wouldn’t be very wise.

Haha. Well, I’ll agree with you there. Neither of us really thought that approaching the teacher would be a good idea, but we wanted some objective input, which we’ve clearly gotten. </p>

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@Nick017

i mean, or you could assume that the teacher does know what she/he is saying, and maybe out of 40 kids she teaches, he is the 4th in terms of leadership, putting him in… 10%. Even if he is the absolute best student, if the teacher feels that 5% conveys the truth better, then it probably does.

Very good point. But, well… this is where including the information about my getting a “Top 1%” from the teacher (and a “Top 5%” in “Leadership,” when I have not demonstrate nearly the initiative in taking leadership roles that he has) would have made the nature of my boyfriend’s frustration clearer… and further complicated the situation. :/</p>

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@ADad

Is it a problem that you got a higher mark than he did?

We just couldn’t understand why she rated me more highly than him in some traits, that’s all. Especially when she raves about him all the time, and she’s rarely expressed admiration for MY ability. </p>

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@je&lt;em&gt;ne&lt;/em&gt;sais_quoi

One of my daughter’s recommenders wouldn’t write a letter unless she waived her right to see it. A couple of times she had to get copies of her letters for scholarships, etc., and the envelopes were always sealed, with writing over the place where the flap closes over the envelope body. I thought, “Boy,they really don’t want her to read what they wrote! I wonder what’s in there.” She never saw any of her letters. I still wonder…

Hahaha, don’t worry – that’s normal protocol. All of my teachers do that, too. It just shows that the letters are legit.</p>