Sarah Tucker on her school reports and work references: “Recollections may vary”

Sarah Tucker

Somewhere in my house, there is a box containing 61 years of other people’s opinions about me.

It is not quite the archive one might hope for.

School reports, references, professional assessments, all written with quiet authority, as though the matter had already been settled. Together they form a kind of accidental autobiography. Unfortunately, it is not mine.

At school I was described as “reticent.” This was true, in the way that saying someone is wet in the rain is true, because it omits the reason. I was not especially inclined to contribute because I did not trust the teacher and found him faintly creepy, which tends to discourage spontaneous intellectual engagement.

I also “tried hard.”

This is the educational equivalent of a polite handshake when others are receiving prizes. It is not wrong, but it is not especially useful either. I did try hard. I also loved art, music, English and physics, and found economics so dull that I struggled to see why we were all pretending it mattered. None of that made it into the report.

There were also the reassuringly glowing reports. I was, apparently, “an utter pleasure to teach.” Which, translated, means I behaved, complied, and did not ask too many inconvenient questions. Engaged, certainly. Curious, less so.

I worked hard. I simply did not always perform when required, in the precise format required, under fluorescent lighting and timed conditions. It is a skill highly valued by the education system, and only intermittently useful elsewhere.

As Richard Branson demonstrated, leaving school early is not always the end of the story, and may, in some cases, be the beginning of thinking differently. Later, in professional life, the tone shifted. I became “striking.” Not intellectually. Visually.

This appeared often enough to suggest it was a professional attribute in its own right. There was even the suggestion that I might get further because of it, not because I thought so, but because the writer did.

That would not be written now. It should not have been written then. The instinct, however, remains. People interpret competence through whatever lens they happen to be using, whether that is experience, expectation, or simple distraction.

One reference developed this into something approaching a theory. I was “striking to look at,” therefore “quickly noticed,” and therefore not always heard. It is a rare achievement to be both praised and undermined in the same sentence.

Another reference moved beyond the professional altogether and into something closer to biography. I was described as “caring, fun, loving,” someone who “appreciates good company.” Vivid, certainly. Not especially relevant. Memorable nonetheless. And so the problem becomes clear. A reference is not a mirror. It is a lens.

Freud might have suggested that what we write about others contains a trace of ourselves, a preference, a discomfort, a small projection dressed up as judgement. Virginia Woolf understood that people are rarely seen whole, only in fragments, in moments, and in whatever light the observer happens to be standing.

Which explains why a report can feel both accurate and entirely wrong at the same time. Occasionally, it is also a diary.

When I wrote the biography of Edward de Bono, I discovered something both obvious and unsettling. People who knew him well described entirely different men. Not variations on a theme, but different compositions altogether. Each account was delivered with complete confidence. Each was, in its way, accurate. And none of them were complete.

Perception, it turns out, is not a flaw in the system. It is the system. Or, as Queen Elizabeth II observed after the Oprah Winfrey interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, “Recollections may vary.” Quite.

The same applies to every report and reference. What you are reading is not truth. It is recollection, filtered through memory, shaped by preference, constrained by vocabulary, and influenced by whatever the writer feels able, or inclined, to say. Even school reports have a habit of misfiring. Boris Johnson was told to set higher goals and to stop finding disorganisation charming. Accurate, perhaps. Not especially effective.

Which is another limitation of written judgements. They describe, but they rarely change anything.

My own references were, if anything, more detailed. Not necessarily more helpful, but certainly more detailed. There is a fine line between insight and narrative enthusiasm. Some cross it with confidence. Set beside these, a recent reference from a female colleague is almost austere in its restraint. Professionalism, determination, intellectual capability. “Diligent, creative, entrepreneurial… navigating complexity with clarity and purpose.”

No biography. No speculation. Just work. Which is rather the point.

There is also the problem of language.A reference can only ever be as precise as the person writing it, and limited vocabulary tends to produce limited people. You may be complex and emerge as “reliable.” Observant becomes “reticent.” Independent becomes “difficult.” This is not malicious. It is simply compression.

If someone does not understand you, they cannot describe you. And if they cannot describe you, they cannot recommend you, however impressive their title may be. Some try very hard. One built an entire evaluative framework, complete with categories, subcategories, and what appeared to be a customer service model. I emerged reliable, responsive, empathetic, and, reassuringly, tangible.

It is not entirely clear one should aspire to be tangible, but it was nice to be included. Modern references are constrained, quite properly, by the need to be fair, accurate, and not misleading. The result is often careful, and occasionally rather empty. Anything too sharp is softened. Anything too specific is reconsidered. Perception, however, remains.

There is also a persistent confusion between engagement and curiosity. Engagement complies. It pays attention. It behaves. It does as it is told.

Curiosity asks questions, challenges assumptions, and interrupts the neat flow of things. From a reporting perspective, it is inconvenient. Which is why curiosity is often described as a problem.

The “utter pleasure to teach” category sits squarely here. Engagement behaves.  Curiosity disrupts.  One is easier to write in a report. And yet curiosity is where thinking begins.

As one observation in my own work on education puts it, students often learn not how to succeed, but how to imitate. They carry “an articulate dullness, mistaking it for intelligence.”

For a young entrepreneur, this is not a disadvantage. It is, in fact, an advantage. Lateral thinking is not about cleverness. It is about refusing to accept the first interpretation as the only one.

What else could this mean.
What is missing.
What does this reveal about the writer.

“Reticent” becomes context.
“Tries hard” becomes persistence.
“Striking” becomes distraction.

Lateral thinking reads around what is written. Choosing a referee is not a question of status. It is a question of clarity. The most senior person available is often the least useful if their memory is vague or, worse, imaginative.

Choose someone who actually saw the work, understood it, and can describe it with some precision. Otherwise, you are being represented by guesswork.

Preferably by someone who does not feel compelled to narrate your personality as though it were a short story. At some point, you will be asked to write a reference yourself.

My father used to say, “If you can’t say something good about someone, say nothing at all.” In professional life, it may be better to say what is true, relevant, and fair, or to decline altogether.

Because a reference reveals the writer, their judgment, their restraint, and their biases. It is easier than one might think to sound reasonable and still be wrong.

Looking back at 61 years of reports is instructive. Not because they define me. But because they show how confidently people summarise what they only partially understand. Reticent. Striking. Tries hard. Neatly contained. Except, of course, not.

There is also the person who loved art, music, English and physics, who found economics impenetrably dull, who worked hard, sometimes well and sometimes less so, and who responded to environment, to people, and to trust, or the lack of it.

None of which fits comfortably into a short paragraph.

What is striking, reading them now, is not what they say about me, but what they reveal about the person writing them.

The organiser.

The observer.

The distracted.

The faintly amused.

And occasionally, the one who had clearly run out of strictly professional things to say. The lesson is not to dismiss these judgements. It is to understand them.

Every reference is partial, constructed, and limited. Useful, certainly. Occasionally insightful. Never complete.

As an author, I know this instinctively. Brief blurbs, references, and endorsements often depend on who one asks. They are a snapshot. Not the whole. For a young entrepreneur, the real skill is not in collecting favourable descriptions. It is in understanding their limits. Not what to think. But how. And once you understand that, references stop being verdicts.

They become what they always were. Recollections. Which may vary.