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Craig’s Ordeal, Getting His Letters of Recommendation

My nephew Craig is applying to several universities to try to get into their Ph.D. programs, and some of the professors were flaking out on him, promising glowing letters of recommendation but being slow about it. It got down to the final day (the letters had to arrive the next day), and he still didn’t have the letters. Let’s let him pick up the story from there:

I ended up running around like an idiot at the last second trying to get that recommendation:

Phone Call:

“Anderson University campus security.”

“Yeah, my name is Craig Burt and I know that Dr. David Murphy has taped a letter of recomendation to his door for me, but the outer doors are locked and I need it to be in another city tommorrow.”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“No it needs to be there tomorrow, I can’t pick it up tomorrow, I have to overnight it tonight.”

“I can’t open the door.”

“Listen, you can watch me the whole time and I won’t do anything but take an envelope off the door that has my name on it, you can have my license, hey you can hold my whole wallet. For that matter you can keep a pint of my blood, handcuff me and I will take it with my lips.”

“I will lose my job if I let you in.”

“Do you have a supervisor that wouldn’t lose his job for doing me this favor?”

“No.”

So I went down and asked the director of admission for help, he called the guy, had him come over and made jokes as he got there sorta mocking the guy: “You want me to come along in case he starts getting out of hand?”

I had to drive to another professor’s place and was instructed to forge the signatures of the other two recommenders (by those individuals themselves). I had to rush to FedEx, arriving about one minute before they closed at 9:30, and they were wonderful to me, so it is all sent off.

Hopefully I get in, but my part is done.

Comments

  1. Chris Gibson wrote:

    News Item:

    Nashville, Tennessee (AP) - Officials at FedEx Corporation (NYSE: FDX) confirmed early this morning the bizarre accident that befell a company Boeing 737 on departure from Indianapolis International Airport’s freight terminal.

    Early eyewitness accounts report an unauthorized individual on the airport property driving an automobile in apparent formation with the plane as it taxied from the terminal. “I’m not sure what he was doing,” said one FedEx employee, who asked not to be identified. “It looked like he was, I dunno, trying to clear the way for the plane or something.”

    Although rumors that the driver appeared to be handcuffed and was seen carrying a pint of blood were dismissed as hysteria, further investigations indicate that this same individual may have been seen following FedEx trucks earlier in the day, as well as lurking outside the freight terminal.

    Police on the scene have reported that the automobile may have interfered with the aircraft during its taxi, and that in an attempt to avoid a collision, the pilot of the aircraft departed the taxiway. Sources within the NTSB have revealed that one of the jet engines impacted a runway fixture, causing a rupture in the wing. The resulting inferno engulfed the jet quickly, and although all personnel escaped unharmed, the cargo appears to be a complete loss.

    FedEx spokesmen would only confirm that cargo from the Indianapolis area, including the nearby towns of Muncie, Hamilton and Anderson, has been delayed, and that the company was investigating further.

    Posted 13 May 2004 at 1:06 am

  2. Tom Chappell wrote:

    I’ve always loved how the cargo was a complete loss; that’s very satisfying.

    Posted 03 Mar 2008 at 8:34 pm

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