Yep. Always have a back-up!! Here is my story as a warning to y’all:
I aced three classes with this professor and she was my inspiration to break into science—and ultimately, medicine (I didn’t have a robust STEM background prior to college). We had a PHENOMENAL relationship and I knew her letter would be amazing.
Here is how my timeline went:
January: We met on the 17th of January and I asked her to write a LOR for me. She agreed so I asked when she anticipates a lull in her work (she’s had the same position for a long while) and she said her work ramps down in early March.
March: I email her to ping her on the LOR and I included my resume, transcript, etc. etc. No response (understandable because professors were using this time to adapt their class to function remotely.
May: My school’s internal deadline is the 30th so I email her again on the 7th or so and she responds. We meet over Zoom and she tells me to send her the LOR collection software link which I do. She says it will be no problem whatsoever as she’s only writing 4 this year so she has extra time. It isn’t submitted by the deadline so I ping her a few more times as while asking that if she is too overwhelmed or busy then to please let me know.
June: I ping her once a week because she had ghosted me by this point. Covid pushed deadlines back so I wasn’t super pressed.
July: I started panicking and I reached out to another professor who I had a much weaker relationship with (but still wrote a nice letter). My file was complete by late July so I wasn’t verified until early September.
August/onwards: No reply from this professor. Meanwhile I see on facebook that she’s doing a lot of gardening hiking, etc. (Which is great but I’m hurt she never did me the courtesy of telling me “no” when she was so sure that it wouldn’t be a problem.
