Letters of Recommendation from a Professor?

Are you nuts? It's been over 5 years since I graduated undergrad. Who's going to remember me? That quiet sensitive thoughtful girl that probably tried to sit as far back as she possibly can so she can internalize all that taught information without having to make eye contact with the professor from the front row for fear of being called on?

(mental note to self - in graduate school i'm going to fight for front or second row seats and bring a tape recorder. my tired note taking hands are, tired.)

I don't want to speak for everyone, so I'll just say that I'm sure there are others out there like myself who find themselves in this particular pickle. Not only do I need a professor to write me a letter of recomendation, I'm going to need to find a professor who might be able to write me a good and relevant one for the degree that I have chosen to pursue in my graduate studies that has nothing to do with my undergrad major. They really should have written a - How to get a recommendation letter from a professor who has forgotten you For Dummies - book!

So while that book doesn't exist yet, I'll write a few paragraphs on how I'm going to go about it and potentially followup soon enough about the outcome of that in a few months.

So I slightly exaggerated that my undergraduate degree has nothing to do with what I want to do in my graduate studies. While they may be at best tangential in that they are both built upon very similar set of skills that can help me "succeed", and that I may be counting on the empathy from the admissions counsel at the schools I want to go to a little too much to "read into" this transition of skills, I do see a light at the end of this tunnel. Why? Because I've decided that instead of going for a "big name" or a more "relevant" subject professor to pursue, I'm just going to do it the honest way. I'm going to ask a professor I had my senior year (since that's the last year I was at school and the highest chance of someone remembering me. of course this might not be true for someone else, but I know it will be true for me), I'm going to ask a professor for whose class I did well in, and was highly engaged in, and was applicable to my major at the time. This was the class that made the most sense to me, and I saw had the most practical career benefits to me, and is actually ultimately what I ended up doing more or less for the past few years. I'm going to explain this WHOLE process to her, and how this career has brought me into my current interest in the subject of my graduate studies, and hope that all of it will make sense to her and resonate with her in such a way as to convince her to lend a helping hand in writing a solid if not superb letter for me. if that doesn't get me into school, then nothing will. nor will i accept it any other way, i suppose.

I know the fault is on me for not staying in touch with my professors - but I really never thought i'd be back in graduate school after working, and I was never the type to keep in touch with a big circle of people. Tough luck, bad choices, and I find it hard to change. If this blog eventually turns into "How I failed to get into Graduate school" at least I know that this will show people a list of things NOT to do.

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