I agree with everything that’s been said. And I’ll add three concrete examples of why this can, and should not, matter in the long run.
1. My high school English teacher suggested, in the margins of a paper on a novel I clearly had not read, that I should perhaps pursue a career in the sciences. (Which is rather funny because I was equally unmotivated by any of my science classes.) Now I didn’t go to college right after high school. But when I did, in my mid 20s, I ended up at Columbia University where as an undergrad I graduated summa cum laude in English literature.
2. In my early 20s, I was a semi-professional photographer and spent a fair amount of time photographing people trying to become fashion models. During one such shoot, a young woman asked me very candidly if I thought she had a chance to make it in the industry. I took the question seriously and, knowing what I knew about the challenges she would face, did not want to lie. So I said no I did not think she could. She went on to have a very successful career as a model.
3. For Angela Duckworth’s brilliant book Grit, a heavily researched treatise on the power of passion and perseverance, she interviewed a writer about a classmate of hers. “This one guy, he wasn’t actually the best writer at the beginning. I mean, we used to read his stories and have a laugh because the writing was so, you know, clumsy and melodramatic. But he got better and better, and last year he won a Guggenheim.”
This of course does not take away from the stress of having to at the last hour ask for a recommendation letter. But I hope you do not think, in any way, that this professor’s opinion of you, or any school’s opinion of you, can determine your future success as a writer. This goes for anyone read in this. Including myself.
And for what it’s worth, this person clearly would not have written a strong recommendation letter anyway. So it’s probably for the best.
Focus on what you can control. Then let go of the rest.
All the luck to you and everyone else applying this round.
