My counselor really does not seem to like me, to the extent where I’m legitimately scared that he will write me a bad recommendation (not just a generic one) and it will kill my chances at any top universities. Admittedly I could have done some things better, but I didn’t intend to do anything wrong or offend him. I’m listing my encounters with him below. Am I just being paranoid or do I have a reason to be scared? And if he does give me a bad recommendation, will it really destroy my chance at any selective university even if I have good teacher recommendations? Sorry about the long rant, I am a bit frustrated about the current situation I’m in.
My counselor and I did not get off to a good start. Before 9th grade started, my dad had to fill out and turn in a form for all parents. He does not speak English well and turned in the wrong form twice. I went with my dad the next time to make sure that everything is done right, and I could tell immediately that my counselor was not happy that we screwed up on the simple task so many times. He was cold and distant with me, but was laughing and joking around with the freshman that went in before me. I understand that we did waste his time and I have apologized about that, but things only went downhill from there. He says hi to students frequently in the hallway but always looks away and ignores me when he sees me, even when I greet him. During sophomore year, I decided to skip a level of math and he was extremely against that, and when I did not take his advice he was almost yelling. I ended up with an A in that class but it did not make a difference.
One thing that I’m really regretting doing is that I dropped an AP class to an easy (but not BS) class. It did not help that I did it during the last week to change schedule. If I stayed in the class, our relationship would not be as bad. He actually seemed to be less cold with me before this incident, and I remember he said hi to me in the hallway for the first time ever a few weeks before this incident. I thought that time could be better spent doing other things - I was appointed to organize a large STEM showcase in school which has been taking up a lot of time, and I wanted to learn more about engineering, an area I just became interested in, through some competitions I signed up for. However, my counselor was very, very mad about it. He was talking so loudly and angrily that people actually came to the door to see what’s going on. When I tried to explain my reasoning to him, he immediately turned around and walked away. I really thought what I did was an acceptable practice; however now it is very clear that he dislikes me - if I walk into guidance office and he sees me, he immediately gets up and leaves or starts talking to other counselors. This has happened every time for the past two weeks and is definitely not a coincidence.
I understand where he is coming from and I know that I am at least partially to blame for those disagreements too, but I do hope to get along with him. There are also things that I have done wrong that may have contributed to his negative impression of me. One is that during sophomore year, I missed a deadline for an online form we need to submit so he had to open the portal again for me (and other students that missed the deadline) specially. Also, there was a cheating scandal in junior year where one of my best friends was a part of. It ended up getting a lot of administrators involved. I was not even taking the same class and honestly didn’t know much about it besides what everyone else has heard, but l was still brought because they thought I could provide more information due to my close relationship with my friend. I couldn’t really give them any useful info and I was probably was a little too defensive of my friend, who I thought did not have malicious intentions, and my counselor became frustrated with that (also, this incidence makes me a bit scared that he will mark “below average” for personal qualities on counselor checklist if he thought that I did not cooperate to bring the scandal to light). He probably remembers this incidence well and it may have left a negative impression of me. However, I have never, ever been rude to my counselor; if anything, I think I’ve been too passive. I have tried to talk to him after the last incident but he does not seem to want to see me. I don’t know what else I could do - help??