sferguso at kimbark.uchicago.edu (Stacy Ferguson) writes:
>>The request is probably mildly inappropriate, but does that mean we have
>>to accuse her of all manner of malingering, opportunism and and political
>>expediency. I imagine most successful scientists got good reccomendations
>We don't have to accuse her. She knows it herself by admitting that
>the reason she's writing this paper is to impress. By using others
>and representing that effort of her own, she's exhibiting enough signs
>that she's unethical and lazy. Not the sort of person I'd want performing
>brain surgery on a member of my family. We're talking about lives here
>and when a potential health professional shows these signs, we're all
>ethically involved in any tragic mistakes she may make in the future
>if we help her attain that goal unethically.
One thing that I don't think anyone has considered yet is that this
may be one of the few ways the student can see of getting a
professor's notice at all. I'm grad student, so my expience is not
yet vast, but undergraduates I've met are stumped ast to how to get a
recommendation--they don't feel that the classes give them enough
contact for the profs to want to write a letter. And, when a student
goes to work in a lab, he or she has very little contact with the
prof, and is supervised by a grad student instead. I've even had a
couple of undergrads ask *me* to write a letter.
Of course, it may be different in the field of genetics, but this is
how it is at U of I in psychology, unfortunately.
Julie
