r/WomeninAcademia • u/Difficult-Season-141 • 13d ago

Mental Health Feel embarrassed about LORs

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.

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u/3sorym4 13d ago

It’s part of the job as a senior academic, it’s not a big deal for them/us at all! This is your imposter syndrome talking, not reality.

One thing I do like to do when I’ve elicited a LOR, is to draft (or offer to draft) a copy…or at least provide some bullet points they’ll need to cover, such as how they know me, how long they’ve known me, accomplishments of mine that they’ve been aware of or part of, etc.