Recommendation season is ending soon (although like the Winter, it seems to be dragging on forever). Math professors and instructors everywhere have been writing and sending letters of recommendations for their students since last Fall for various reasons, like academic jobs, grad school, REUs, and summer internships. It is a delicate process, and you want to make your students look as good as they possibly can, while at the same time trying to maintain your reputation as a trustworthy judge of the student’s talent and preparation for these different tasks. You are possibly writing for many students and you want to speak highly of all of them but still individualize the letter so that it’s clear why each student is worthy of the thing you are recommending them for. I have written many (MANY) such letters myself recently, so I understand how difficult, time consuming, and complicated this process is. But there is no excuse to sound like a jerk. In particular, there is no excuse to sound like a sexist jerk. I am referring to the not-the-compliment-you-think-it-is statement “Best female student I ever had” and all of its variations. There are so many things that are wrong with this phrase, but I’ll focus on three.
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