VeritasPrepDozie wrote:
Hi Devon,
First of all, it is more important to have meaningful recommendations than major names writing your recommendations so read my feedback through that lens. When thinking of constructive feedback in the past it does not always need to be something that is necessary negative which I think most people naturally gravitate to. Really think of all of your interactions with this recommender and think of how you have worked together. Constructive feedback could be her empowering you on a project or giving you positive feedback because she knew you were having a tough time on a project. Think about all of your interactions. Also, I would explore any feedback she has given you outside of your work on the non-profit like at work, family, or socially. You want to make sure she has meaningful topics to discuss and if she does not then you may have to re-evaluate your choice of recommenders overall and at the very least for this school
Thanks for the response. I talked to my direct supervisor to ask him what he was going to say. I think I had this idea in my head of it needing to be some kind of Full House moment where my recommender formally sits me down and gives me explicit advice that I then went and acted on. That's obviously pretty rare, and my supervisor couldn't even come up with anything like that. Granted, he's given me tons of feedback and I've learned a lot working here, but it's always been just really small pieces of feedback that I didn't think were worth writing about.
So we're going to just basically take a small piece of feedback and it'll end up being explained in a way that sounds more profound than it actually was. Such is the nature of the question, I suppose.
Next question on this, I'm obviously concerned about damaging my application by saying shortcomings in my letters, even if they were corrected. The two answers to this question will probably be something like:
1. (Direct Supervisor) - He has learned a lot here and is always eager to get things done. Sometimes this has resulted in mistakes being made, so I explained to him that if there isn't a tight deadline we're trying to meet, make sure to take time and review work before submitting. Since speaking with him his quality of work has vastly improved.
2. (Co-Board Director) - We went through a lot of staffing changes and he was working with his committee in a way that laid too much work on staff, which would have worked great prior to these changes but were causing difficulties on staff work loads. Since explaining this to him he has shifted much of this work from staff to volunteers, and is always considering staff work loads when delegating work.
Are these good types of recommendations? I'm just obviously not that excited about saying that I was making mistakes when I started working here, etc.