SFPL Internship : Letters of Introduction

Career counselors, relationship counselors, and counselors of just about every other sort warn us that we "only have one chance to make a good first impression."

That's worrisome enough when you represent yourself -- as you do on a date, or when filling out a job application, or when meeting a neighbor for the first time -- but the worrisome-ness is compounded when you're representing someone else as well as yourself. You have to be on par with them, and somehow rise to the occasion. 

The letter that I send on behalf of SFPL to our ten selected peer/benchmark libraries will represent not only me, but also SFPL -- and so if I make a spelling or grammar error, use slang or improper formatting, or say something unprofessional, it will reflect badly on us both. Knowing this, I was almost paralyzed by worry a few days ago when I first tried to write it. But I eventually developed a strategy to combat that.

To work myself out of the worry, I searched my files for letters with tones or styles that were comparable to what I was trying to convey. The letters didn't have to be about the same topic, they just needed to have the same "feel". This is a trick I learned from my creative writing classes -- that if you want to write a poem in rhyme or meter, you should read someone else's poem in a similar meter first. That way the tone and flow will be fresh in your conscious and that will help you find your  "groove" faster. So after reading a few pages of "letter-ese" I was able to push past my worry-block and write one. 

I wrote several drafts, each with slightly different styles, then set them aside and did something else so that I could forget what I'd written and pretend I was the receiver instead of the sender. Reading them with fresh eyes and ears helped me to figure out which was the best. And from there, it was a matter of flow and fine-tuning.

I now have a draft with which I'm satisfied. Of course, it's not perfect -- if you aim for perfection, you'll never finish anything -- but if my Supervisor likes it, and feels it won't reflect poorly on SFPL, and thinks that the librarians who receive it will be more inclined to reply to it than to throw it in the dustbin, then I'll be satisfied.

True, you only have one chance to make a good first impression, but if you let that knowledge freeze you up, you're bound to make a bad impression.