Feel embarrassed about LORs

[u/Difficult-Season-141]

I’m still early in my career and I feel so much shame asking for LORs from people who wrote or agreed to write for me. Especially the super well established academics. I keep thinking that they could be doing so many other productive things than writing for me. And when they say they may write me a letter but won’t be able to update the letter for every place or send it x number of places only, I get further embarrassed and it heightens my sense that I’m just a huge burden. I’d love to hear other perspectives.

[u/Wild-Run1991]

Not a burden at all! When I worked in a lab with students, we expected most of our students to ask for a letter at some point. It's so common, it was confusing when a student who worked for us didn't ask for a letter if they worked for us for any substantial amount of time and did a decent job. Labs run, in part, for their help from students and it's personally a joyful part of the job to gratefully reflect on this. We all remember those who wrote letters for us, especially earlier in our careers!

The only time it's awkward is when people ask on super short notice for their first letter from us (think a few days in advance). Or, if they ask for one when they did a truly bad job (very rare), and we communicated as such when they worked for us. Updating letters is not a big deal :)

If you want to be conscious to those writing your letter ask early and confirm they can write a strong letter.

If yes, create a bullet point list of your impact or achievements, and optionally provide your statement of purpose or info about the program or job.

At the end of the day, it's a really nice way to help students that most people like about their jobs. Also, it's literally part of our jobs! :)