Thank-you’s.

They’re on my to-do list, somewhere after this blog post and before a paper outline and rehearsing a presentation. (Okay, so maybe I’m procrastinating just a bit…)

Small little phrases, jotted on small little cards with cheesy illustrations on the cover. (Almost sounds like a haiku, doesn’t it?)

I grabbed literally the last two from the Huntley earlier today (well, the last two besides some that although labeled “Thank you,” said something about sexiness on the cover… I figured those weren’t very appropriate) and unfortunately really did not have much selection as far as cheesy covers go.

Even if the cover does happen to be a pale orange with pink flowers all over it, one thing I have learned this semester is that thank you cards and letters do matter when it comes to careers, internships, and generally being a polite person. The idea was thoroughly discussed at the Employer Panel I attended during Life After Scripps week; it came to mind shortly after I submitted my application for an internship a couple of weeks ago; and I was reminded of them most recently when submitting my study abroad application. (There was a giant sign in the Off-Campus Office reminding students that “it’s a good idea” to write thank you’s.)

Of course, writing a thank you to a faculty member I know fairly well versus a thank you to an interviewer for a competitive internship are quite different tasks. Luckily for me, I have the easier of the two tonight: the cards I’m writing are to faculty/staff who wrote recommendations for me for both study abroad and the internship application; if I get an interview, obviously I will have to write more, and those ones will have to much more formal.

My friends and I were actually discussing thank you cards today at lunch, because of course they have also thought of the fact they should thank faculty for writing study abroad recommendations for them.

“What should I even write in it?” asked one friend.

Keep it simple, we all decided. Get too long, it may be creepy, we all thought: staying concise will get the message across yet also keep it professional.

My mother ingrained a sense of writing of thank you cards in me since I was little, so the action is not too forced. Seeing as I do appreciate the time these people spent helping me out, it doesn’t hurt to actually express that to them. Not only that, but it may help me in a long run in case I have to get a recommendation from these same people later during my college career.

Also, check out Career Planning & Resources’ lovely page online that explains how to write more formal thank you letters to interviewees.