<p>How many people here buy christmas gifts for their professors?
I am curious whether you think that buying small gifts for your professors – and a few superflous TAs – would only make one appear more ostentatious?
I am an excellent student and am recieving high A’s in all of my classes; I do not need to be a sycophant in order to recieve an A. However, I would like to show my appreciation for their completing of numerous letters of recommendation forms.
(And – of course – because they were excellent teachers ^^*)
I’m fairly sure that I will be either the only student, or one of a few students, in each of my classes that buys christmas presents for their proffesors.</p>
<p><em>Please input anything relevant to the topic.</em></p>
<p>If you get along with them, and they are your friends, why not buy them a gift? I usually don’t buy many people gifts, but why not if you get along with this person.</p>
<p>I don’t buy Christmas presents because I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I think it’s nice to give modest, <em>useful</em> gifts to people to show gratitude/appreciation. I wouldn’t give a present to every professor, though, just a few…</p>
<p>I would try to get the whole class to buy the present. You could organize it. I just feel it would be too much of a suck-up thing to do… depends on the present, I suppose.</p>
<p>It’s never inappropriate to buy a small gift for any professor who wrote a letter of recommendation for you. It also wouldn’t be out of line to get a small gift for a TA that went above and beyond (maybe by spending extra time helping you out). But, if I were you I’d include a note with each of these thanking them for the letter of recommendation or whatever it was they did for you. I also wouldn’t give gifts to professors whom you’ve had no contact with outside of class. That way you can avoid any appearance of trying to “buy” a grade. For any TA or professor in this category, you could simply buy a card if you wanted.</p>
<p>My small medical humanities class got our prof a dinner certificate and we all pitched in. We gave it to him when he invited us to dinner at his house.</p>
<p>i never give presents to my professors. don’t see a need. theyre all nice people, but i dont see a reason to give them a gift. I did give my one prof’s daughter 2 harley davidson t-shirts a few weeksa go, but thats because i was giving them away as prizes in our competition and they were left overs and the little girl really liked them.</p>
<p>It’s okay to give a <em>small</em> gift to a prof who’s written a letter for you–you’re just thanking him/her for doing something s/he didn’t really have to. Beyond that, I’d recommend against it. I’m always uncomfortable when students give me things, and I’ve actually refused gifts that seemed expensive and looked more like bribes than gifts. Personally, I really don’t like brownnosers–I actually find it offensive that a student might think that I’ll give him/her a higher grade b/c s/he gave me a present.
If you have a really good teacher, write him/her a thoughtful card, which means a lot more than a gift (to me, at least). I especially appreciate it when students make it a point to give me the card <em>after</em> I’ve given them a grade for the class. That reassures me that they’re sincere and not just kissing up to try to get a higher grade.</p>
<p>I agree with collegeprof. I still stand by my idea of trying to get the whole class to chip in to buy a gift. Either that or go with something simple, $5 and under.</p>