RECOMMENDATION LETTERS FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

About: This story examines teachers' opinions on writing college recommendation letters. I tried to get a variety of thoughts, from an academic teacher who writes dozens of letters each year to a new teacher just getting started in the process to a music teacher who doesn't get the chance to write many letters. I also gathered information by surveying the teachers at MVHS on the number of letters they write and other statistics.

A leaf floats gently from the trees, joining the array of other vibrant reds and oranges fluttering to the ground. A chilly breeze whispers through the air, rustling the leaves as it passes by. Autumn has come, and for seniors, that means it’s college application season.

They scramble to write their essays, anxiously attempting to find that perfect topic to write about and to cut down the word count before the deadline. However, as stressed as many students may be feeling, teachers are facing their own struggle regarding college applications. Chemistry teacher Kavita Gupta, who teaches mostly juniors, receives many requests for letters of recommendation, and feels that writing letters is a difficult process.

“It is just so much work to write a letter thoughtfully,” Gupta said. “Because if you are writing for a student, you really need to understand [who they] are, what makes them unique. [You need to] show their uniqueness and years of experience with them to the colleges in one page. So it is a lot of work because [you’re] first reading and understanding, then you're trying to create a storyline for them and then you are actually writing.”

Besides the work of writing the letter itself, another obstacle is finding the time for it, especially as fall coincides with two grading periods and no school breaks. With the many recommendation letter requests she receives, Gupta feels that the high demand is more than what she is able to accomplish adequately.

“It's difficult finding time to write the letters when there's so much,” Gupta said. “I wish I had more time to write a letter for each of the deserving students, but I don't have that. So I need to do a lottery just to keep my sanity and minimize or just manage my workload.”

Literature teacher Scott Perry agrees that the responsibilities he already has as a teacher, especially a first-year teacher, limits the time he has to help students with the college application process. He recalls spending the whole weekend before the first due date for the SSR forms completing them.

“It was a funny story,” Perry said. “My very first letter was a student that I had last year, a really wonderful student, I was glad to help him. But somehow he didn't understand the deadline. And this was for Oxford University. He came to me the day before, and he needed this letter to go to Oxford the next day. And he was so nice, and we worked it out. We sent it off to Oxford, which I thought that was my very first one, and [it was] like, ‘Whoa.’”

Perry was somewhat nervous to write his first letter, as he was unsure of what he was supposed to do, but he still didn’t think it was too difficult once he got started, especially since he enjoys writing letters.

Music teacher Ricky Alegria, however, feels that there can be challenges when writing a letter, especially with students that he doesn’t know as well, compared to those that he has had for multiple years and are very involved in the music program. Despite this, he never denies a request for a letter of recommendation.

“I don't think I have [denied a request] once in the eight years I've been teaching,” Alegria said.
“Because I consider it part of the job and, you know, I'll do anything for my students if if it'll help them in the future.”

However, he feels that being a music teacher in such a STEM focused school like MVHS unfortunately has a negative effect, as students often ask for letters from academic teachers instead of those in music or art.

“Whether it's where they choose to apply, or maybe the counselors give them a certain piece of instruction, or maybe it's just whatever the perception is, it seems like most students want a letter of rec from an academic teacher,” Alegria said. “That's what their application calls for, that's what they feel that they need.”

Due to this, Algeria feels he loses the opportunity to write as many letters as he wants to, even for students that he would potentially be able to easily write a good recommendation for.

“I have students for four years and I get to know them very well,” Alegria said. “And they didn't ask for a letter of rec, because it said they needed it from an academic teacher. And so they go through their EEnglish, math and science [teachers] first, and then if they're doing something music specific then they’ll ask me. So it kind of has a weird kind of reversal in that sense.”

Perry is also eager to write recommendations for his students. However, even though he was relatively lenient with the deadlines for letter requests this year, he plans to be stricter with them next year to allow him to manage his time.

“In the future I’m going to talk to all of my students,” Perry said. “Because I'd love to write [a letter for] all my 11th graders this year. I will be excited to write a letter for them, but they can’t just ask me two weeks before because it's a big process.”

Gupta also feels that getting sufficient time to write recommendations is important, and would like the system to reflect that.

“My wish is that there is time built in the day for writing this,” Gupta said. “If not, there is compensation for doing that because it is a significant amount of work and some of the teachers that mostly have junior students get to write lot more than other teachers. So I think it is only fair to think about how to create a structure to support this important thing and students’ lives.”

SUBTLY HUMOROUS TRAITS

About: This story I co-wrote is about Subtle Asian and Curry Traits, two popular Facebook groups at MVHS. We did some background research with a news article by The New York Times about Subtle Asian Traits. I also interviewed Darren Qiang, an administrator of the group to get more information.

Facebook, popularized for its ability to find and connect people, has since evolved into a platform for a staple of the MVHS student community: memes.  

Within Facebook, there are countless designated groups and pages for posting memes. Among these is a popular group known as Subtle Asian Traits, currently with 883,462 members and hundreds of posts a day. According to The New York Times, it was first created in September by a group of students who attended the same Chinese school in Melbourne.

“The decision to establish the group was quite an impromptu decision with no real organization,” administrator of the group Darren Qiang said in an interview over Messenger. “The idea and the name of the group was actually established after we were inspired by the relatable content from ‘Subtle Private School Traits,’ hence we decided through a long night’s chat to make a Facebook group dedicated to Asian memes instead.”

Junior Catherine Liu joined the group when her friend added her. She comments and tags her friends in posts that she finds relevant.

“I think most of the posts are pretty mild,” Liu said. “They have those typical jokes about how if you’re Asian you got to get those A’s and as a kid, Asian parents always give you Chinese and math [to do].”

A spinoff of this page, Subtle Curry Traits, is gaining popularity as well, with 201,307 members and counting. Subtle Curry Traits is more centered around memes and posts relating to South Asian and Indian lifestyles.

Junior Sowmya Thanvantri, like many of her peers, is an active follower of Subtle Curry traits due to its undeniable relatability.

“Subtle Curry Traits seem like your inside jokes so it always seems more personal to you. It’s just people who are your own age making these memes so it’s a lot funnier,” Thanvantri said. “I can show my parents the memes, I can show my friends the memes.”

In the case of any Facebook page as popular as these two, administrators of the group are entrusted with the role of ensuring the content remains up to par. In fact, according to the New York Times, moderators are busy with over 3,000 posts pouring in daily.

“Being in this group adds another sense of responsibility as everyone on the admin team wants its members to have a good time in the page,” Qiang said. “I guess it also gives us a good sense of satisfaction [that] we were able to make such a huge community where everyone is able to relate with each other and reminisce over the highs and lows of growing up Asian.”

Liu echoes these sentiments, also finding the relatability of the posts in the group to be what makes them so enjoyable.

“It's things that you always thought [would] only be for yourself or for your family,” Liu said. “But then to find out that it is actually true for a lot of other people, it feels nice to do to like have the effect of shared experiences.”