This is worse in some industries (academia. Academia is fucked), and I hear it is even worse in the US, but my god is this ever frustrating…
It really shows you how low people think of you, when you’ve worked with them for some time/think they know you moderately well, and then you ask them for a reference, and they either flat out ignore you, or claim not to even know you “well enough”… 😔
Teachers (well, lecturers, tutors, et al) are particularly bad for this - “Oh, I worked with you on and off for a year. Soz lol, still don’t know you from a bar of soap.”
Look, I get it - it takes a degree of effort, and no one wants to be held accountable for “vouching” for someone else anymore, but fuck, everything requires them - Grad School, jobs, internships, everything.
If no one is willing to (legitimately) provide something so basic, how the fuck is anyone expected to even take that next career step??
This seems much, much worse than when I was last in this position (asking for academic references), 8 years ago, too…
Didn’t think we had slid that much, as a society, in that time, but… Yeah. 😔
Stupidly hard to work around, FML.
Yeah--you put some people in a position of authority, even one as weak as this, and they'll flex. Especially academics.
When I was teaching, everyone got glowing recommendations from me if they were good students. Even if I had them for only one semester.
Someone else who I asked said “I have a family now - I don’t have time”, lol…
Ouch.
But to be fair, it’s been a while. He’s probably more annoyed at being contacted and asked like this, unfortunately…
Better than the academics I asked, though. The academics were dogshit about this.
Wish I had you as a teacher then. 😏
To be fair though, this is like a specific set of questions, i.e. “how would applicant react in this situation?” “Do you think applicant would apply themselves well?”, etc.
So… It would require a small degree of effort, on their part…
I’m just going to go for people I know outside of academia, because they’re much more willing to help, apparently…