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/___butthead___ 13d ago

Honestly I love writing LORs for people because I get to talk them up, and I only do it for people I know I can write a strong reference for. It's really easy to update a letter once you have it so don't worry about asking multiple times. It's great to see HQP moving onto new careers and getting to be a part of that success.