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[Judy Belland]

I recently read Thom D. Chesney's article on rejection letters, and I thought I would share my own favorite.

The head of the department and I had met years before the position was created. We met for an informal interview when she happened to be visiting the town where I lived at the time.

Sometime later, I received a rejection letter. The opening paragraph of the letter was benevolent. The department head wrote that she respected my credentials and that I should not feel slighted by the fact that they had hired someone else. Were it not for a certain problem with the letter, I probably would have believed that she was addressing me personally.

The problem? The letter was addressed, "Dear Doug." Apparently, she (or her secretary) had produced multiple copies of the same letter; she'd replaced the address, but overlooked the salutation. Needless to say, it left me questioning the sincerity of her "respect." It also left me wondering how many others got a "Dear Doug" letter.

Since my last name begins with a "B," if the letters were done alphabetically, undoubtedly the vast majority of applicants received a letter with the incorrect name. My one consolation was that I knew that Doug hadn't been offered the job, either.

[Charlotte Manly]

My own favorite is the department that sent out a mass e-mail rejection letter to all candidates who had applied, and failed to hide the names of the addressees.

A few days later, another message arrived, seemingly from the same address and addressed,  "Dear Sucker."  This latter e-mail message went on in quite cynical terms and concluded by listing all recipients in the body of the e-mail. A day or two after that, the chairman of the department sent a very apologetic mass e-mail message, hiding all the recipients' names, and reporting that the second e-mail message was not from the department.

Another department used to (and probably still does) send acknowledgements and rejections by e-mail, attaching the letter to the e-mail message. However, they don't have mail merge working right, so everyone gets the same letter addressed to the alphbetically first applicant.

[Mark Marlopal]

My favorite non-rejection letter occured when I interviewed for a position as a freshman adviser. At the time I happened to be taking a course at that college as well as teaching there. Anyway, I never received a rejection letter, but I did get a letter informing me that as a freshman, I was required to use the freshman advisory office!

[Anonymous]

Congratulations to those of you who actually get rejection letters! I have gotten enough to wallpaper a couple of rooms, but what is really disappointing is not hearing at all from the universities where I spent dollars, time, and effort to apply. They ask for everything under the sun, then do not even respond when they decide I am not the candidate they want! Very disillusioning.

[Anonymous]

I have a couple:

1. Upon returning from an out-of-town interview at a college, I found a rejection letter from that college dated before my interview date. To top it off, they never reimbursed me for my expenses. Apparently, they interviewed me purely for entertainment.
   
   
2. I turned down an offer from another college back in December. Just a couple of weeks ago, I found a rejection letter from them, stating that they opted for someone else. I swear, I dumped them!
   

[HigherAnon]

That's terrible; how insensitive and just plain dumb.  Actually, I think some of those colleges/search committees make a case for being classified as lower education institutions.

[Anon]

In one instance, I was sent a rejection letter after applying for a job, then a letter withdrawing the rejection and offering me an interview, as they had gotten me mixed up with somone else. Then I got another rejection letter after the interview.

Another time, after I applied for a position, the department secretary, who was trying to let me know how I'd done before everyone went away for a holiday weekend, sent me a letter via e-mail in an attachment labelled "Reject.doc."

When I was finally offered a job, the professor who made me the offer must have been very used to rejecting people because he told me that it had been a very tough choice, but that the committee had finally decided to give it to me. How overwhelming.

[Barb]

I applied for a job in a sociology department at a four-year college. I received a rejection letter two months later. One-and-a-half years later, I got a rejection letter from the human-resources department of that same college stating that my application for a faculty position in the English department had arrived too late to be considered. I had not applied for any job at that college in the year and a half since the first application, but I hope they send any upcoming applications to the right department, on time!

[Bill]

I was once rejected twice -- for the same job.  After the usual four months of waiting for a reply, I got the standard "thanks, but no thanks" rejection letter from a large university. A few months later, I got the same rejection letter from the same place. I was so pleased to see the trouble they went to to ensure that I understood just how unwanted I was!

[Anono]

These rejection-letter stories are a welcome relief from the disillusionment that accompanies them. I have a good story to share, too:

Last year I conducted a national job search and sent one application to a smallish university in Florida. This university sent me one rejection letter in February, one in March, and one in April -- all for different positions. I decided that if one more came in the mail, I was going to write them a letter assuring them that I was not packing my bags and that they had no need to reject me from every department in the university. By then, unfortunately, the letters had stopped coming, and I haven't heard from them (yet) this year.

[Hating life right now]

What about the rejection letter I received a couple of weeks ago, urging me to apply for one of the numerous positions that would open up for fall 2001?