Please, valued Sir, can I have a recommendation?

TPP gets contacted by former students all the time.  Do you remember me? Generally, yes, my memory of students is quite good actually, and I have surprised some people from years ago.  They often then tell me about what they have been doing with themselves, and this is great, but you'd be surprised how few students actually keep me up to date.  Hopefully social media will help in this regard, but then TPP would have to do Facenook or something like that.  OK, that probably won't work.  "Would you please recommend me for this job/graduate program/professional school?"  Recommendations are part of my job, but did we have any significant interaction beyond the classroom?  Your transcripts tell people how that went.  Did you do any research with me?  Any field work? Any special projects?  If no, then there isn't too much I can do at this point. Admissions people and people with jobs to fill want to know if you have a good work ethic, if you have intellectual skills, and can do research, and frankly, TPP doesn't know.  Maybe, maybe, but to be an honest recommender means TPP cannot say because he has no basis for knowing.  This is why we urge undergraduates to get involved, to interact with the faculty; this is why you chose an undergraduate research university, so that you have faculty who will do these things with you. So it was great to hear from you.  TPP will do what he can. "Would you please provide feedback?" OK, that was not the most impressive bit of email prose you just wrote.  You say you "will be incredibly elated and gracious" to have my recommendation, but when you write like this, it mostly doesn't help your cause.  Be simpler and more direct.  Wish we had worked on writing more when you were a student.  Wish we had talked more a couple of years ago and maybe this could have been a more positive communication. Still you did communicate, and you want to do something new, and those are both good things.

Doom Looms - end of the semester version

While looking forward to the end of the semester, the last couple of weeks are not the Phactor's favorite time of the semester because now it all comes home to roost and you end up explaining the sad reality of their situations to students. 
Upon learning that their potential grade in your course is nothing to brag about, you're asked, "Can I get some extra credit?"  Now of course this student has cut nearly 50% of the classes and turned in none of the required lab reports, but now they want an extra chance to get some credits.  Sorry, but you should have made more of the opportunities you had all semester, so you got some nerve to ask me to make some new opportunities just for you.  Besides fairness requires me to offer similar extra credit opportunities to everyone in the class.
A student has complained about being treated unfairly.  Class participation made up a fixed % of their grade and they never said a peep, never contributed to any discussion, and had they not answered, present, in response to the initial enrollment check, you might think them mute.  They also failed to post any of their ideas or comments on the alternative non-vocal course e-bulletin board, or enter into any of those discussions.  The professor didn't explain that this was an alternative, yet everyone else in the class knew about it, and used it.  Deaf perhaps too. 
A student concerned with poor exam scores comes for help, and when you discover they have very poor study skills, basically last minute cramming, you offer to help them construct an approach for dealing with content heavy advanced courses.  Hesitancy.  No, they really don't want that kind of help, they just want to get enough credits to graduate.  Don't you think you'll ever have to learn anything again for the rest of you life?  Don't you think effective learning is one of the most marketable of skills?  Bottom line, effective studying is just too much work and takes too much time to fit into their life style.  Think they'll come to me later for a letter of recommendation?  Think maybe a former student now in a position to hire will notice they took a course with one of their professors?  Believe it or not, they might ask for a recommendation.  It happens all the time and the Phactor always tells them that perhaps they should seek a recommendation from someone else because they can't understand that we are bound to provide an assessment of their abilities based on our experiences with them, and not obliged to simply say, "They're really, really nice."  Even if true, and it may well be true, our recommendations are our gold standard.  You can't fudge it for one because in the end that may well be detrimental to all the really really good ones who also sought your recommendation.  And yes, even if you don't ask for a recommendation, people come to me and ask me to evaluate students I've had all the time.  The person you're interviewing with may have been in my class 20 years ago, but they still remember.
Well, that's if for now, but there's still 2 weeks of classes left before final exams, so this is probably not the last. 

Some students learn too late

A recent BS graduate wants the Phactor to write a letter of recommendation supporting their application to graduate school. Now this is a good student, a nice person, but our only interaction was in a seminar, so it is only within that limited context, a mere 12 hours of interaction, that my recommendation can be based, and this is not a context that will impress admissions committees. You see boys and girls, graduate school is not just about more classes and grades, and while you may have good enough grades for admission to graduate school from the university's perspective, my colleagues will be sorting through 100 or so applicants looking for 10 or 15 who have evidence of an ability to think and perform academically on a higher level, evidence of an aptitude for independent work and for conducting research. One of the biggest and most frequent undergraduate mistakes is not taking advantage of the opportunities available. One of the real benefits of our university is that you can work with faculty doing real research, and all of you who have any academic aspirations should have taken this opportunity. Our best students have been to scientific meetings, presented their research, and some even get authorship on publications, but now you have graduated, and only now do you choose to speak to me of this aspiration, so my advice comes too late. All is not lost, but now you may have to invest more time in finding an internship situation that will give you an opportunity to show your scholarly stuff. Sorry. You just found out how part of the world works too late.