"To Whom It May Concern,

Last year I had... ummm... I forgot her name, but it's on the application, so you know who I'm talking about, as a student in my AP World History class. This laundry list of nerd activities she gave me shows me that she is determined to succeed, or at least determined to get accepted and pay as little for your overpriced education as possible. Said girl is currently number one in her class. She participates in National Honor Society and Key Club and a bunch of other boring stuff that is supposed to sound impressive on these things. She has won some awards in the science fair over that past couple of years (but honestly, I saw that experiment and come on: everyone knows that you can make a potato out of a clock. Or I mean a clock out of a potato. Or I mean a clock powered by a potato. You know what I mean. Sorry, it's like 11 o' clock at night, and I still have 25 essays to grade before tomorrow).

So, said student apparently also does some volunteer work. As you know, many of her nerd activities require this. Like she needs 40 hours for National Honor Society, 50 for Key Club, and 120 for some worthless medallion she's obsessed with getting so that she can wear it on graduation, and then throw it in her closet, never to be seen again. I'll admit, that's a lot of hours. That's a lot of (unpaid) work. That's also crazy. I don't know where this girl gets all this time to do all this stuff, so I mean I guess that's somewhat impressive? But like, how genuine is this? You guys make all these kids do all these community service hours, running around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for some way to help others help themselves. They go out and participate to get their paper signed. They're only doing it to get accepted to college or get an award or blah blah blah. Not really a community service, if you ask me. Plus, if I remember correctly, I'm pretty sure this girl is the one who offers "tutoring" so that she can flirt with that boy for an hour. Yeah. There's a lot of sketchiness in this whole "community service" system.

I mean, I won't deny it. The Jane Doe is smart. She was smart enough to get the good grades and do all these clubs and stuff, but why is it important? I wasn't in any of this stuff when I was in high school. I went to an okay college, and I'm fine (just kidding! I'm drowning in student loans. And these essays. I still haven't found the willpower to finish them in between breaks of writing this. Maybe I'll just give the rest a B. Or a C. Yeah. A solid 75% sounds good!) But really though. No employer will care what you did in high school. You can do the job, you get the job. So all of these "accomplishments" will literally mean nothing in 10 years (probably less) which means that this letter of recommendation is also meaningless.

But I mean I guess it's important to whoever this girl is, and I should probably use my smart teacher language. I'm just saying that this whole thing is dumb. And I'm dumb. I should just have a generic outline of this thing, so I can just plug in all the dumb info because on paper these students are basically ALL THE SAME.

Well this is said student. She's smart, super busy, super involved, yadda yadda yadda. Accept her into this college. Or not. Just let me get back to my grading.

Sincerely,

Teacher

P.S. You know, I think I do remember her name. It's like Stephanie or Sierra or Sydney or something with an "S". Whatever. I've given up on grading. They can wait another day. I'm going to bed.