danisj

This is an amazing thread. It pretty much hit the nail on the head for me. I've struggled with this all of my life. It's only this year that I have learned to ignore them. At 23, it's time for me to embrace my academic side and go to grad school. I was smart in high school, but I made no effort whatsoever. I didn't read, was a procrastinator and I took the easy way out all of the time. Low achievers who end up doing well enough are "cool." I wanted to be cool so I did the bare minimum. I made it to my dream college, but I kept up the same work ethic. This did not fly in college, but I didn't have a good support group to break out of my bad habits. After being in a job I hate for two years, I regret downplaying my academic achievement. I should have worked harder and been proud about academic achievements. It only hurt me in college and I can see it hurting me in the future.
 
At the same time, we have a political culture that devalues education as "elitist" and "snobbish," and that combined with the fact that a college degree nowadays can't guarantee you a job at McDonald's, have emboldened people who chose not to pursue higher education (or were unable due to a variety of circumstances) to try to bring down those who have.
 
We have to ignore these people. People are nonsense. We can't always figure out their motives behind what they say, so there is no need to let it affect us. I have to make up for the time I lost by listening to these people. I just hope that it's not too late.

Agree with stapling to his forehead.
 
I hope you got to him by now.

Thank you, everyone, for your responses! Fortunately, all of my recommenders submitted their letters today. Yesterday, life seemed pretty bleak, but now I feel much better. 
 
I left out an important detail. My recommenders are not professors. Unlike professors, my recommenders do not carry the same kind of heavy workload, they do not have countless letters to write nor are they familiar with the process. I made sure to ask them if the target date was fair, if they had any questions or concerns. I gave them all a lot of guidance on these letters. They all said they would submit by my target date, that it was "more than enough time." If they wanted/needed more time, all they had to do is tell me. I'm very understanding and considerate. After all, they are doing me a favor. But they never hinted at that whatsoever. Then they didn't respond. That was my issue.
 
To give a sense of one of my recommenders...Today he said to me, "Maybe if I put these off long enough I won't have to do them at all." He was not joking. Shame on me for choosing this character. I immediately removed him from sending letters to my top two schools. I gave him plenty of opportunities to back out so I just don't understand. 
 
I set artificial deadlines for multiple reasons, but as I think about it now, I think a major reason is because I didn't trust my recommenders enough. 
 
You live and you learn, I guess. And boy, I have learned a lot in these two years after undergrad. 

I understand that it must not feel great to get this refusal and particularly all of the details. Perhaps the prof just intended to do you a favour, as Sigaba suggested, by providing their full reasoning, which is more than you might normally get in a refusal. I think that although I would be hurt/disappointed that the prof didn't remember me as well as I had thought, I would still appreciate that the prof spent the time to go through the history and give you all of the details and reasons for refusing. I think I would have been even more hurt if the prof has just said "No, I don't want to write you a recommendation letter."
 
Also, I think this is probably one of the best outcomes possible from this situation. It's far better that the prof said no than to agree and then write a very generic/plain letter. And as I said above, I would personally prefer to know all the reasons the prof said no instead of just "no".
 
Look at it this way -- if the prof confused you with another, sleepy, student, then how well did they really know you? How could they have written you a strong LOR? In general, if you are trying to get a "secondary" letter (i.e. from a prof that doesn't know you that well because your only interaction was during one or two classes), then you really needed to have made an extremely positive impression on the prof to actually get a useful letter. So, it might be a good thing that this prof, whom you did not turn out to have made an extremely positive impression on, did not write you a letter since the letter would not have been that great!
 
I'm not trying to discount your feelings after this rejection. It's fine to vent and feel sad after a disappointment like this. Grad school and life will have many disappointments, so I think it's healthy to cope with the emotions in the way that you like (e.g. venting here is one good way) and then move on to the next step / alternate plan to achieve your goal. Do you have another prof in mind to write you another letter?