Writing palanca letters has never been easy. When I was in high school, my teachers said there should be three things written in a palanca letter: a) the addressee’s strongest/best qualities, b) the addressee’s weakest/worst qualities, and c) words of thanks and encouragement for the addressee. So you see, I’ve always tried to keep these things in mind whenever I write such a letter. The problem is, if you’re writing a letter each for forty or so people, problems start coming up. Though I wanted to be as faithful to my goal as possible, it’s simply impossible.
When you’re in this business, you have a basic goal which basically applies to everyone: you want people to learn as much from you as you could possibly teach them and hope against hope none of them end up destroying themselves in one stupid way or another. So you try to tell every one of the forty or so people to keep doing their best and live without regret, to not lose hope, to count their blessings, to aim for the highest goals, and so on. And try as you might to keep each and every letter a personal treatise to the addressee’s significance to your life, you end up with forty or so letters that say basically the same things since you want the same things for everyone. It’s the most frustrating thing to attempt to be original and end up trapped in a hopeless copy & paste situation. Oh, but anyone who could say the same thing in forty or more different ways deserves to be worshipped for his godliness. Sadly, I’m pretty sure Hell will freeze over before I achieve any semblance of godliness.
I learned three things in my frustrated attempt to write forty plus original palanca letters. First, my handwriting sucks. After falling asleep on the keyboard trying to think up of more ways to say the same thing, I had to write maybe thirty or more letters by hand (oh, my poor calluses!). Second, I’m not as verbose as I would like to think myself to be. This situation has aptly proven my creative, verbal, and literary inadequacy. I thought I could be more imaginative than this, but surprise, surprise. Third, I should not be in this profession in the first place; but this I’ve always known. I am quite sure I’m not cut out for all this teacher business; I’m more of a recluse/hermit type, really. However, as long as people still ask me for palanca letters, maybe I still somewhat end up mattering to their lives in my efforts to do my job. So I guess I’ll just have to attempt to improve my handwriting, since trying to say something in more ways than one is far, far more difficult, not to mention frustrating.
(posted elsewhere 10 Feb 2006)
When you’re in this business, you have a basic goal which basically applies to everyone: you want people to learn as much from you as you could possibly teach them and hope against hope none of them end up destroying themselves in one stupid way or another. So you try to tell every one of the forty or so people to keep doing their best and live without regret, to not lose hope, to count their blessings, to aim for the highest goals, and so on. And try as you might to keep each and every letter a personal treatise to the addressee’s significance to your life, you end up with forty or so letters that say basically the same things since you want the same things for everyone. It’s the most frustrating thing to attempt to be original and end up trapped in a hopeless copy & paste situation. Oh, but anyone who could say the same thing in forty or more different ways deserves to be worshipped for his godliness. Sadly, I’m pretty sure Hell will freeze over before I achieve any semblance of godliness.
I learned three things in my frustrated attempt to write forty plus original palanca letters. First, my handwriting sucks. After falling asleep on the keyboard trying to think up of more ways to say the same thing, I had to write maybe thirty or more letters by hand (oh, my poor calluses!). Second, I’m not as verbose as I would like to think myself to be. This situation has aptly proven my creative, verbal, and literary inadequacy. I thought I could be more imaginative than this, but surprise, surprise. Third, I should not be in this profession in the first place; but this I’ve always known. I am quite sure I’m not cut out for all this teacher business; I’m more of a recluse/hermit type, really. However, as long as people still ask me for palanca letters, maybe I still somewhat end up mattering to their lives in my efforts to do my job. So I guess I’ll just have to attempt to improve my handwriting, since trying to say something in more ways than one is far, far more difficult, not to mention frustrating.
(posted elsewhere 10 Feb 2006)
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