Hi Professor, This Desperate Student Needs Your Help

I’ve taken a break from writing emails laced with thinly-veiled flattery about how “fascinating” a researcher’s work is and how “meaningful” a professor’s lectures are. Instead, I’ve turned toward a much more unhinged format that has flooded my inbox in recent months: the election fundraising email.

By Sophie Gao

November means several things: Thanksgiving, election season, and a sudden onslaught of panic about next semester and the summer beyond. In the spirit of the latter two — and because I myself have recently been fiending for lab positions and rec letters for summer internships — I’ve taken a break from writing emails laced with thinly-veiled flattery about how “fascinating” a researcher’s work is or how “meaningful” a professor’s lectures are. Instead, I’ve turned toward a much more unhinged format that has flooded my inbox in recent months: the election fundraising email.

Who knows? Maybe if I get desperate enough, I’ll actually send these.

Because we all know how well those fundraising emails work.

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SUBJECT: You are not a terrible lecturer! I love you!

Moments ago, a Q Guide review called YOU “a terrible lecturer.” THEY WERE TALKING TO YOU!

FIRST, they called your class “THE WORST EXPERIENCE I’VE HAD AT THIS SCHOOL.”

THEN, they called it “A WASTE OF TIME.”

THERE IS NOTHING FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!

We must JOIN TOGETHER to defeat their CAMPAIGN OF HATE. At this critical moment in the semester, I need your support more than ever.

I don’t think you’re a “terrible lecturer.” I don’t think your course was “the worst experience I’ve ever had at this school.” I’m not like other students.

Support the candidate who doesn’t spew HATEFUL RHETORIC in anonymous online reviews. Please write me a rec letter.

Thank you,

An increasingly desperate student

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SUBJECT: A gift for you!

Valued Friend,

I want to give you something special! Do you want me to provide you and your laboratory with unpaid, menial labor next semester? Do you want a clueless undergrad to ask silly, obvious questions during lab meetings? Do you want to hand me off to a graduate student/postdoc to be trained and forget I exist until I beg you for a rec letter two years later?

With the end of the semester fast approaching, you need to ACT FAST! Once I run out of stock (once my Google Calendar starts looking less like a calendar and more like a technicolor mess), you’ll miss your chance.

Visit the website below (my LinkedIn profile) for more details on how to claim this exclusive prize!

Cheers,

Your generous benefactor

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SUBJECT: The President Needs Your Help

This is President Alan M. Garber ’76.

I would like to tell you a story about my favorite Harvard student — perhaps the greatest ever to grace these hallowed halls.

When she was applying to college, she decided — because of her marginal interest in science and a nebulous desire to “help people” — that she was going to be a doctor. Now, she’s working day and night to make that dream come true and cobble together a halfway-decent medical school application.

The truth is, she won’t be able to hit those goals without your contribution. Every hour you can devote to training her in your lab can make an enormous difference.

This is the final call. In a matter of hours, she will succumb to peer pressure and declining medical school acceptance rates and become an econ concentrator.

It would mean the world to me and everyone here at Harvard to see your laboratory’s name on her resume.

Sincerely,

President Garber

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SUBJECT: Please don’t write me a rec letter

Tomorrow is the most important day in my campaign.

I need two letters of recommendation so I can apply for internships, and the entire world will be waiting to see if I’ll be accepted.

If these results are underwhelming, all the LinkedIn Warriors will start believing that my future career is over.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

You have kept this movement alive. So, most importantly, I want you to take care of yourself. All those other students in this gateway course are undoubtedly also asking you for letters, so if you don’t have the bandwidth to write me one, please don’t. Seriously. Unlike them, I care about you deeply and won’t ask if you are unable.

But if you can, even if you’re making me write the letter myself and you sign your name underneath without reading a single word, it will mean more now than it ever could.

But please don’t if it’s outside your capability. Your support and prayers are more than enough.

If you can… please do?

Thank you,

Prospective Reverse Psychology Concentrator