"Honesty/Integrity": Top 1-2%, or Top 5%, or merely Top 10%? Well, let's see, I didn't bust anyone for cheating in the class he was in. They all seem equally honest, as far as I know. So he's in the bottom 50% I guess. Or the bottom 100%. But that's not a choice. Sucks to be him!

I don't do many of these, but I have a two-step process:

1. I ask: Should the institution be happy to have this person?
2. If the answer is "yes," I write with that in mind and don't fret about strict literalism.

Isn't the assumption that if you like the student you will put them in the highest group, and so if you don't then there must be something horribly wrong?

Maybe that's why all the children in Lake Wobegon are above average.

Also heebie -- you did a post called "References" right next to a post called "Referendum" just to confuse us, didn't you? Evil!

4: It's even worse than that. First I called it "The System" and then I saw them next to each other on the front page and thought it would be funny to make the titles similar.

Aren't I a gas?

I love that that was intentional.

I'm in the top 1-2% for mildly annoying jokes.

2 is right. I remember graduate admissions committee people complaining about it, but they also weren't saying "let's take the people whose references are from the painstakingly literal."

Three thoughts (from post-education):
1. even in 1993, a senior guy at the research lab I worked at said to me (regarding recommendations): "we must be carefully graduated in our assessments". It's a fine, fine art, writing these things, is what he meant, b/c if you ding somebody you're costing them a job.
2. a friend more recently put it differently: "a recommendation letter is PR; if you're not comfortable writing a press release for the application, then decline"
3. And so, when a friend asked me to write one, I declined, b/c I didn't feel up to intentionally lying, and wanted him to have success in his life & career.

It's a difficult thing, but basically I only write recommendation letters for people I can honestly feel like a salesman for.

I know you're in a different position as a teacher of many pupils, so the above isn't as applicable.

I'm guessing she has only two pupils, but I admit I've never seen her in person.

Also I think one thing that matters is whether they're a match for the institution. Applying to UT-San Antonio is very different from applying to Fancypants Ive League.

Yes, but you probably don't want to explicitly say that the student was really in the top 1%, you'd tell them to apply elsewhere.

Maybe you do? I think they probably know.

As Felicity Huffman would say, "What's the worst thing that could happen if you lie?"

I really do understand how the game is played. I just loathe "We all agree on secret rules, right?" kinds of games.

Or maybe I'm just lazy? Hard to say.

God, I hate these things. If I have to write a letter, I can write it once and upload it to 20 places. But then they all make me choose a username and a password and answer 40 different multiple-choice questions? It's enraging.

Our graduate school makes people answer a few questions like this, and when I do graduate admissions I have never once looked at the answers.

Hate the player, not the game.

But at least if that person applied to 30 different departments at the same school then you'd only need one password. And that's what really matters, uniformity between departments at a single school.

I once saw a letter from a colleague that included something to the effect of "P.S. I do not have time to answer rankings questions, and instruct my assistant to give all students the top ranking in every category. The text of my letter contains my evaluation of the candidate." I have adopted that strategy. I don't know if it hurts my students, but I doubt it.

To clarify, I don't have an assistant.

Maybe if you'd gone to a better graduate school, you would.

I'm glad we're finally focusing on the 3 Rs: references, referenda, and railroads.

I do think it hurt me in applying to some colleges that I wasn't in the top ten percent of my class even thought I was salutatorian.

I got one of these with absolutely batshit classifications. Like, the top was something like "This student is the most outstanding student I have ever worked with across multiple institutions and is a once-in-a-generation talent." The second tier was (give-or-take) "This student has already made significant contributions to the field and will reach the upper echelons of their profession." The lowest tier was something like "This student is an excellent candidate for this program and has already made significant contributions to the field."

I can't remember what I ended up picking, but I thought it was absolutely ludicrous. Maybe I let him draft the choices for me and I reviewed them? I couldn't believe anyone would use a questionnaire like this. The student was in fact excellent, clever, and generally delightful, but I mean, I'm not really able to assess "once-in-a-generation talent."

Pokémon generations are faster.

And another education gripe! All my kids have had various pedantic teachers who have enforced that you canNOT say "and" when you say a number like 107 outloud. You say "one hundred, seven" and not something embarrassing like "one hundred and seven". You know, because we're preparing kids for the real world.

The reason, my kids parrot to me, is that you're supposed to save "and" for decimals. Which also doesn't make sense! You don't say 107.5 as "One hundred seven and point five", and it's not confusing to say "One hundred and seven, and five tenths". The economy on the word "and" is so, so weird.

Rivaled by high school math teachers absolute insistence that having a radical in the denominator is pure anarchy.

They're probably going to sound like Texans anyway, so what's one more verbal oddity?

Anyway, I've never heard that rule in my life and I graduated in the top 12.5% of my high school class.

29 to 26.

I still like Hawaii's kindergarten teacher as the winner for needlessly sad rules for coloring: stay inside the lines, no white space, and only true colors.

What's a fake color?

There was a girl in my first grade class who used to very sternly let me know when I had failed to color in the lines. Today she's in charge of a good bit of South Dakotan government stuff.

32: Spray tan.

You can get them so they don't make you orange.

In Centrist America, all fractions must be impartial.

Literally the only thing I remember about partial fractions is making puns on the name. This should probably worry me as I'm thinking of taking computer science classes and exploring whether to do computer science graduate education, despite my advancing age. And to think that 25 years ago I could invert a matrix. Now I'd probably throw my back out.

Not that partial fractions are important to CS (I wouldn't know at this point). More that I've forgotten a lot of math.

A matrix is like a box of chocolates, what the columns and rows.

Now I'm imagining someone writing on a board very quickly while someone else yells: "Sum, Riemann, sum!"

26: Glad they're preparing your kids to write paper checks . . . Oh, Texas.

I have just had to write one of these using an incredibly complex online portal but all they wanted to know is "Is this her? Did she work for you? Did she turn up?"

The secret rules thing is maddening. There is a huge difference apparently between "Cpl Smith should be promoted at the earliest opportunity", "Cpl Smith must be promoted at the earliest opportunity", and "Cpl Smith must be promoted as soon as possible" and I keep getting it wrong. Tempted to do the next one as Beowulf pastiche.
"Smith the bold, wily shield-bearer,
Ambush-clever, competent with admin,
Dragon-slayer, developer of subordinates,
Worthy of promotion as fast as possible -
Now humble before you in quest of your blessing
For substantiation of his acting rank as OR-3, subject to the approval of the Army Personnel Centre, Glasgow"

Yet another reason I'm glad I'm not in academia. Seems like a bullet dodged, considering how many in my family are/were. It sounds worse than public trust positions (e.g. Top Secret) with the federal government.

29: I hope you all called yourselves the Sweet Sixteen.

No, because we always thought of ourselves as being 17. But the exchange student didn't count for ranking. And we had 17 for freshman through junior years, but one kid dropped out before the senior year. He's the only one of us that's not alive now.

Today is my least favorite (non-crisis) day of the year. After my teaching marathon I have to go listen to a marathon of senior seminars.

I don't even like movies, let alone three hours of 15 minute talks from nervous 22 year olds about repetitive math topics. And instead of acting like a whiny brat, I have to act like a pleasant adult. And instead of tuning it out, I have to fill out a rubric on each presentation. It's forced paying attention for three hours, starting when I'm already tired and cranky.

It doesn't sound that bad, I understand. But it's my private little hell.

All my kids have had various pedantic teachers who have enforced that you canNOT say "and" when you say a number like 107 outloud.

For some reason I remember this quite clearly from a Mind Trap card - they asked the first number you need an "a" to spell out. The trick was they figured a lot of people would say "one hundred and one" and explained it was technically "one hundred one", so the correct answer was "one thousand". Their final sentence was "It's as incorrect as saying ninety and nine." Different justification, but same foolish-consistency as hobgoblin.

Never got it in my K-12, though.

All my kids have had various pedantic teachers who have enforced that you canNOT say "and" when you say a number like 107 outloud.

For some reason I remember this quite clearly from a Mind Trap card - they asked the first number you need an "a" to spell out. The trick was they figured a lot of people would say "one hundred and one" and explained it was technically "one hundred one", so the correct answer was "one thousand". Their final sentence was "It's as incorrect as saying ninety and nine." Different justification, but same foolish-consistency as hobgoblin.

Never got it in my K-12, though.

46: No, it sounds awful.

42 makes me want to reread the Heaney Beowulf

50: Try Maria Dahvana Headley's!

32: The ones that Cyndi Lauper doesn't sing about.

You should watch "Vibes" if you get a chance. Her best movie and Jeff Goldblum's best movie. Plus Peter Falk and, briefly, Steve Buscemi.

Four down. Struggling to stay awake. But I got here early enough to get a seat near the back at least.

I forgot about 46 and thought you went to a bar in the middle of the work day.

Seven down. I'm gonna survive! maybe.

I'M DONE! Now we have to have dinner with each other.

I've heard good things about What-a-Burger, but I've never been. Still, if you haven't picked a place, maybe try it.

Speaking of glowing, why is the Republican Party putting in so much effort to let the world know Hunter Biden has a big penis?

+references

58. They want people to laugh at him, but their sense of humour got stuck around the time of Aristophanes?

60: Because ancient Greeks valued testicle size over penis size? I see a direction for counterpropaganda if so.