Written A Letter Of Recommendation
"We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent."
--Barack Obama
Tonight, I had the pleasure of writing a letter of recommendation for a friend and colleague applying for an advanced degree in screenwriting. It was an honor for me to be asked to do this for her because I truly believe she is an excellent candidate.
Without talking too much about the exact details of what I said, I'd like to outline some of the things I tried to do when I was writing the letter. I wanted to be specific about examples in which I'd worked with her, so I talked about instances in which she did well. I also compared her to her peers and talked about attributes I thought she brought to the table that no one else did. I talked about areas in which I saw her improve immensely and how she was able to overcome her obstacles even in the relatively short time I worked with her. Of course, I included how I know her and what capacity I worked with her. That was my way of increasing my own credibility.
There were three schools she wanted me to recommend her. One of them was the University of Southern California. USC has a website where I could submit the recommendation. It's a simple upload of my letter and a few survey questions.
USC's rival the University of California-Los Angeles also has a similar online system. Both make it very easy to make a recommendation.
Like I said, it was an honor to do this. It feels great to be able to do something so important for someone else's growth as a person, and I hope I was able in some way to help her get into one of these great graduate programs.
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