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.