Volume CXXXIII, Number 15 February 8, 2002 f

Recommendation letters reveal a lot
GENEVIVE CREEDON

There are things in life that we are bound not to understand. I have spent most of the past two years doing things that, whether or not I was aware of it, added to my wonderful resume of things to put on my college application. Don't get me wrong; I certainly didn't do anything for the sake of my college application. I went to a French American School, where college was rarely, if ever discussed, but college isn't the only excuse for doing things for alternative reasons.

My roommate is applying to be on the Residential Life staff next year, and the longstanding complaint is that reducing one's life to a few sentences or bolts on a white page is not only discouraging, it's unfair. Granted, there has to be a way to evaluate candidates by a single standard. Every evaluation process does it.

The problem is that, in some cases, parts of an application that really allow for a glimpse of the applicant (i.e. recommendations) are, by default, filled out by people who don't really know him or her.

For first-year students (or others, for that matter) applying for Residential Life or anything else that requires a staff recommendation, it is probably fair to say that options are limited. It is true that Barry Mills entrusted us with a single task at the start of orientation-to get to know one faculty member well. It is certainly a good goal and intention, but the reality for most kids our age is that there still remains a gap between us and, properly speaking, "adults."

Perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed by the fact that I have had close relationships with adults from the time I was in seventh grade and got over the "us/them" complex, which made me one of the only high school seniors I knew who didn't have a problem in finding someone who actually knew me to write a recommendation.

The issue transcends college applications, too. We are admitting that as young adults we have yet to learn the distinct importance of truly human contact. Of course, we intermingle with a good number of people on any given day, but most of that contact is rather superficial. It's as if we all wear wet suits from fear of letting the waters of closeness, friendship, and even love penetrate us to our core.

The result is a world of growing impersonality that we learn to accept and cherish, because it doesn't threaten us. It dehumanizes us, but we still like it. We don't spend half as much time reaching out to touch each other as we spend recoiling and hiding. Maybe it will sound strange to make such a suggestion, but if every person on this campus took the time to hold one person's hand every day, I'd be willing to bet that even such a small action would, in Robert Frost's words, make "all the difference."