Hello everyone, how are you? I hope you are well at this very stressful time of the year. The first semester for people still in school is almost over. Few more weeks and then the winter break will come. Of course some of us will spend the winter break completing applications for grad. school and this kind of stuff. I will be one of those. In order for me to have less worries during the break I decided to start getting my stuff together from now. Couple of days ago I wrote an e-mail to Paul asking for a reference letter. As I was thinking how to put my e-mail together (I am pretty sure some of you too, organize your thoughts and the e-mail before you send it to Paul) I remembered Paul in one of our TA meetings saying that every time he receives a lengthy e-mail at this time of the year, saying how they are doing in general with school or with their lives, he had the feeling that somewhere in the e-mail he would find a section saying “by-the-way I am thinking of applying to graduate school and I am wondering if you could write me a reference letter”. Somehow this feeling over the years was “significantly correct”. For my “request e-mail” I decided to be original and not give the opportunity to Paul to wonder whether this e-mail was for, among other purposes, a request for reference letter e-mail, so I wrote the request as my subject title. Paul really liked this one and in his response to my e-mail, he asked me to copy this and some other parts of my e-mail to the stats forum so you guys can read them as well. So here are some quotes from my e-mail. But first I want to wish to everyone good luck with the rest of the semester and good luck with the grad. or professional school application process.

“Subject: Request for a reference letter”.

“As you know as a part of my application package, I will need several reference letters from professors that I think they know me. (Here it comes Paul, I remember you were telling us that usually when you get e-mails from students asking for references first they write a bit about what the have been up to and then they ask you for a reference letter. I tried to be original by heading my e-mail "request for a reference letter"). So I am wondering if you could write a positive reference letter to the schools that I am applying to”.

“I know that now that you are taking the German classes you appreciate more the big effort (and the big satisfaction at the same time) a foreign language student would put. I liked your question that you posted on your last posting on the forum which was how can we manage to take four or even five courses at the same time. Can you imagine even more if these four or five courses were in a foreign language?”

“I am writing the subject GRE this Saturday (I remember in one of our TA meetings you were advising us for this test and you said that you can not be very smart in these kinds of tests. I was wondering what you meant. Now I know. I was doing some practice Questions with Giovanni Foti and we came across a stats question that it did not make a lot of sense. We were puzzled by it. Then I remembered your advice and we realized that it was true”.

Certainly my whole experience here in Canada is the best, most challenging, most productive and most rewarding experience I ever had. To give you an example, starting next semester I will do an independent study with professor Chataway on the effects of the apology text that the government of Canada issued several years ago to the aboriginal people in Canada to the aboriginal people in our school. I would never imagine that I would be involved in this kind of research. But being here in Canada gave me the opportunity to open my horizons and explore questions that were unknown to me”.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2002