bzzagentpanda

I agree with both of the comments and that I wrote in haste. I guess my relationship with my professor is a little different since we drink and have known each other for almost 15 years. I finally talked to him today and after a long conversation we came to a consensus. We both truly felt bad and if my spouse was in the same boat and was gravely ill I would not know what to do and I am sure it would have affected me as well. I too would also have been too proud to tell anyone. As with the waver, him as well as one of my other professors told me to check it but don’t worry about it as it’s a formality, again that’s probably just because of my long relationships with them. My other professor who said that actually let me look over her draft before she sent it so maybe thats why I didnt know it was taboo to actually see it. Thanks again all.

TLDR – as the title says: Try to read your letter of rec’s before submission I am sure this might be too late for some, but hopefully someone out there will benefit from this warning. Learn from my mistake and read your letter of recommendations (LOR) before they are submitted. I have been a working professional for several years but kept ties with my old professors. Several months ago I announced to my professors that I was finally going to apply to doctoral programs and they were very optimistic, and even volunteered to write me letters before I had a chance to formally ask. I chose three of those professors who have written several LOR’s for me in the past so I knew that they would write great letters on my behalf. Here is where things go wrong. Closer to my soft deadline I noticed that one of my professors started to act “odd” and I knew something was wrong. He was my committee chair for my masters degree and I knew he had a publication deadline and obviously under a lot of pressure. He said that he was still more than willing to write me a letter and that I should only apply to 3 schools. I found that odd but was able to coax him into believing 4 school applications would be acceptable. I asked if he was OK and he said it was a personal family issue and just shrugged it off. This was about four months ago in which later I found that his wife almost passed away. This brings us to the present. I have been going stir crazy waiting for decisions and have received 3 out of 4 rejections so I nicely asked my professors for guidance and if they would be willing to show me the LOR that they wrote. Two of my professors were more than glad to email them to me and they wrote exquisitely. However, my “odd” acting professor disclaimed that I waived my rights to seeing my LOR but ended up forwarding me a copy anyways. I was shocked to find that the first half of my LOR was a blatant reproduction of my statement of purpose and the second half was basically a reflection of my professors depressing state of mind at that time and was quite woeful and damaging. I have asked my professor to explain his reasoning on the LOR but I am sure that the damage is done and I have accepted that. There is always next year and I will definitely not use that professor again. Additionally, hopefully the schools that I plan to apply to again won’t remember his depressing letter.