This week I'm writing college recommendations.

Ugh. I hate them because I don't think the college admission officers necessarily believe my hyperbole about my most superb students. I write as concretely as I can, offering as many specific examples as I can of a kid's sterling mind or character,  but those stories end up feeling flat on the page. For example, for half a dozen years, The Phillipian's editors wanted to beef up the online edition but just didn't get around to the difficult and time consuming work of it -- but MY STAR STUDENT THIS YEAR, ON HIS OWN TIME OVER THE SUMMER, CREATED AN ENTIRELY UPDATED AND FRANKLY FANTASTIC ONLINE EDITION THAT SETS THE PAPER UP BEAUTIFULLY FOR YEARS TO COME WITH ARCHIVES AND A SEARCH FEATURE AND WASN'T LOOKING FOR ANY CREDIT HE JUST WANTED THE OTHER EDITORS TO BE PLEASED WITH IT AND ISN'T THAT JUST AMAZING?!  -and I can picture the college admission guy reading this, like, "Meh. The last kid I read cloned a bat."

 Easily it takes me two hours to compose recommendations for my star kids. I write and rewrite them, mess around with the phrasing for EVER, and when I'm done, and filing them away, I run into my first draft, which is always precisely as effective as the final draft -- which is to say not effective. All the drafts sound like complete bs. But really they are not!

And on top of this, I think many of my colleagues write better recs. They're better at the genre, or they're just better writers, period. I admire their skill, and they haunt me. I am competing with them, just as my students are competing with theirs.

To complicate matters further, I'm as upbeat as I can possibly be about the weaker of my students who ask me to write on their behalf. If I agree to RECOMMEND them, damn it, I'm going to BAT.  So I probably serve them well, while serving my geniuses not so well at all.

I think we should do away with the letters of recommendation. Here's what we should provide:
1. date of kid's request that we write the rec
2. kid's thank you note to us
3. a tweet, like so:

*Best kid ever, run don't walk to admit.
Smart, a little flaky.
*Heavenly, deserves every chance, will make good.
*Sunny disposition plus giant brain equals some day solve world problem.
Privileged, talented, a little clueless.
Weird genius.
Will have fun in college, mostly.
Good kid, your call.

The asterisk means: *Please, believe me.

My blogging has ground to a halt because a good friend (and good writer) whom I admire, after reading my blog, said to me, "Hey, you might want to go easy on describing every single kid you taught as brilliant and wonderful." So then I became paralyzed because all the stories I had lined up to tell were, in fact, all about kids I think are superb, brilliant, and wonderful.

- The one who wrote a chap book in 10th grade that was, and still is, one of the best things I've ever read, who I assumed was such an English jock she'd ask me to write her college recs, and she'd become a famous author, credit me. She had very light blonde hair and a tiny lisp and a fiery spark to her, tempered by an appealing blush of shyness; she had just the right combo of talent and personality to take the world by storm and, accepting her Pulitzer, mention me. But then lo and behold it turned out she was a big star in the science department. This girl's father had MS, and she'd spent her summers lobbying the state house in her gritty New England city, demanding handicapped access ramps be built downtown (which lobbying was successful), and she was studying to find a cure for her dad, and etc. I was furious!

- The one who was very tall in 10th grade, and who was incessantly looking right at me during class, smiling all the time, nodding, paying extra intense and careful attention, which would have felt like brown nosing except he so patently wasn't - he so clearly loved to TRY - that I just knew he was adored all over campus. He grew to a great height in the next two years. I don't think he was a terrific athlete at all, but he played varsity basketball - there was his height of course, but also, if you had a team, you would want this kid on it, that's how much his character would infect everyone. It wasn't charisma exactly that he exuded. It was more Buddha like. Compassionate, accepting, and furiously upbeat. In 10th grade in my class, he worked his way to the highest grade, as he did again in a Senior elective, but if anyone's actually getting sick of my praising my students, you'll be happy to know this guy was NOT the best basketball player at Andover and was NOT the most brilliant kid in my classes; other kids were better writers, plenty smarter. But ha ha, THIS young man was accepted to Harvard where he made the varsity basketball team as a walk on.

- Yes there are kids I've taught that I didn't like, at least while I taught them. Most of them, sooner or later, grew into their brave and selfless best. Some of them didn't - maybe their parents hovered and made excuses for them so they always had an inflated opinion of themselves, or they were so talented they got away with their arrogance, or whatever. Who wants to read about them? To be so perfectly honest, I can't remember them all that well.