[Elana05]

I am in a moderately better place now in terms of my illness, the meds I am on have really been helping and I feel stronger than I have in the past few years. In slowly emerging from depression, I have been thinking a lot about my career-life and I have decided to apply to graduate school in an area where I have always had a lot of interest. I am excited but also terrified.
In terms of the application process, I think I will be moderately strong in the essay, the interview, my grades were pretty good etc.
However, due to the fallout of mental illness I have skipped around a lot in jobs with many gaps in my resume and short periods of work (6 months here, one year here, one year there) and I have never worked in the area for which I am going to school (even at the most basic level). I mean, that's why I want to attend school for it. Most of my work has been in retail. Although I do have one boss that I really got along with and I can ask him (I worked there for five years), I also have been bugging him for references as I have gone in and out of jobs. I hope he won't feel exasperated by me. Maybe I should go see him in person? Also, this boss I worked for was a retail job, so is it really worth it? I can use old teachers, but my undergraduate degree happened over 10 years ago! Will they even remember me? After that (more recently) I did take 2 courses at a local community college and really got along with professor there, a great teacher, but I only knew him for a year. Will this higher tier school frown on a reference from community college?
This part I hate. I hate asking for this type of stuff from people. All in all I'm a good person, I didn't have any bad work habits or anything, but I also didn't do one thing for very long and I don't imagine people really remember me.
I need three letters. Ugh. How will I do this? Any advice or experience in the matter would be terrific.
Thanks all...

Hello, Elana05. The professor from the community college would seem ideal since you received good grades. I would ask the professor you knew for one year also. Perhaps this thought is rather unorthodox, but I wonder if your therapist might write a letter for you? You have worked hard to get better and he/she may be able to convey your determination as a worthy asset.

[LoveHopeStrength14]

I recently just applied for my graduate studies and I used my internship supervisor, a professor from my undergraduate studies and that was 2 years ago, an employee and a supervisor from a place that I volunteered at.

How soon do you have to turn in your application? If you have some time you can possibly volunteer for a short time maybe a month and afterwards you can ask them to become a reference for you. A rule of thumb is whoever you ask to become your reference you must ask them if they will give you a positive referral or not? There are people who will agree to give you a referral but it doesn't always mean they will be a positive one and instead they can actually be a bad one.

Good luck!!! If you don't get accepted this time then you can use the time to work on building your experience in the field so that when you write about yourself it can more relatable to the graduate studies. I didn't get accepted my first time but I didn't give up. Keep going and not let it stand in your way.

[salukigirl]

It matters more what they say and not who they are. Sure it's nice to have some great letter from a well known prof but that's pretty rare to get. Make sure it is someone you know well and you think would have very good things to say about you. Also, make sure you ask IF they can write you a nice one. They can write a letter for you but say in it that they can't support you.

Whatever you have to do to be happy is always worth it!! Good luck!

[AniManiac]

For a MS program, salukigirl is right, it matters more what they say than who says it. I'd be a bit wary about having a therapist write a letter, though - that would be viewed as a little odd. I asked prior job supervisors to write me recommendations for my MS program, since I was too long out of undergrad for my profs to remember me (and I didn't do that well in undergrad anyway...) It can help for you to give them a paragraph that you write saying why you're a good candidate for the program, then your recommenders know what to say. Also, the admissions committee are unlikely to be concerned about your job history or gaps in it; usually there are hundreds of applications to review, so a few heuristics are used to cut the pool down to a reasonable size for human review, and there are still so many applications that really close scrutiny is not so common.

However, if you're applying for a PhD program, then it matters a lot who writes your letters! That's a whole different thing. All PhD programs are selective, and most are very, very selective; we accept under 10% of our applicants each year, and the constraints on admissions are very complicated.

[Direction]

I volunteer and used two people from that location for references.