<p>I just read one of my recs from a really smart teacher (columbia grad, writing dissertation, etc), and it’s great, except for a couple places…</p>
<li>mispells my last name.</li>
<li>refers to me as ‘her’; i’m a dude.</li>
<li>says i was a varsity athelete. i wasn’t (just a quick reference, doesnt go in depth at all).</li>
</ol>
<p>They’re clearly not intentional errors/lies, and there is alot of personal insight towards me personally, so i don’t really know where they came from (and it doesn’t seem like a generic template letter).</p>
<p>btw i would have asked for corrections, but he insisted it be confidential, and i thought it wouldn’t matter if i read it. any thoughts??</p>
<p>It's okay that you read it, but I would send it with his mistakes. Although he is a scholar even he is human and makes mistakes and I'm sure wherever you are applying to; that their admission reps will look past that to the content and not to silly spelling mistakes. </p>
<p>yeah it kinda seemed like that for a minute...but i talked to him alot prior to his writing the letter, we talked about music, life, even drugs (wierd but cool)...i just think it got transferred from another person's thing, bc it was kinda the bs section...</p>
<p>I don't think that there is any harm in reading rec's especially when the teacher gives it back to you to send.
About being in sports, I think you should just leave it, unless it's a big part of your rec. In that case maybe talking with your prof about changing what he wrote would be the right choice.</p>
<p>"..but i talked to him alot prior to his writing the letter, we talked about music, life, even drugs (wierd but cool)."</p>
<p>If you both talked about both of your use of drugs, the conversation was inappropriate and I also suspect that the errors on the recommendation are due to the teacher's continued use of drugs.</p>
<p>Nah, it's all part of this really smart teacher's plan. He wants to create a special identity for you to confuse the adcoms into accepting you. Quite brilliant, I must say.</p>
<p>Sure, a person can talk about drugs and not use. I asked whether the teacher and student were talking about their own drug use. The kind of errors that the teacher made on that recommendation were inexcuseable. The only reason I can imagine for such errors would be if a person wrote the recc while drunk or high.</p>
<p>Any teacher who volunteers to write a recommendation has an obligation to proofread it, and there is definitely no excuse for referring to you as the wrong gender and misspelling your name. Like the previous poster suggested, it is likely that the only way he would do something like that is if he were drunk or high. I would tell him "no thank you" and get someone else to write your recommendation right away.</p>
<p>"I don't think that there is any harm in reading rec's especially when the teacher gives it back to you to send. "</p>
<p>Ummm, you'd be violating the integrity of this process. Basically, you are dishonest. You have to live with that. Also, the teachers should send it on their own</p>
<p>yeah thanks for assuming i'm a crack addict. i really appreciate it. he's just really liberal and doesn't mind making a reference to marijuana; it's not really THAT taboo. He wasn't reefing up when he was writing it - i just think the varsity sports thing is spliced in from someone else's letter. I shouldn't have even mentioned the drug reference - you would have to know the eccentric nature of the teacher to know that it wasn't a big deal.</p>
<p>I sent the letter...then read a copy, i trusted him enough to send it, and i got the shaft in return.... i still love the guy, it's not like the letter is going to break my app. He wouldn't written it high...my name is hard to spell...i ran track but not on the varsity level, and i can excuse the 'her' mistake - he's writing a ton of recs. Should i ask him to re-write it? He didn't insist it was confidential, but he gave me several copies in out high school's envelope. i'm applying to cornell and while i think i have a good chance, i dont want the rec to hurt my app.</p>
<p>and northstar you didn't actually ask any questions. I love 'continued drug use' though, it's great.</p>