“Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other. And despite my love of efficiency, I think that thank-you notes are best done the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper.
There was a young lady who applied to get into the ETC and we were about to turn her down. She had big dreams; she wanted to be a Disney Imagineer. Her grades, her exams and her portfolio were good, but not quite good enough, given how selective the ETC could afford to be. Before we put her into the ‘no’ pile, I decided to page through her file one more time. As I did, I noticed a handwritten thank-you note had been slipped between the other pages.
The note hadn’t been sent to me, my co-director Don Marinelli, or any other faculty member. Instead, she had mailed it to a non-faculty support staffer who had helped her with arrangements when she came to visit. This staff member held no sway over her application, so this was not a suck-up note. It was just a few words of thanks to somebody who, unbeknownst to her, happened to toss her note to him into her application folder. Weeks later, I came upon it.
Having unexpectedly caught her thanking someone just because it was the nice thing to do, I paused to reflect on this. She had written her note by hand. I liked that. ‘This tells me more than anything else in her file,’ I said to Don. I read through her materials again. I thought about her. Impressed by her note, I decided she was worth taking a chance on, and Don agreed.
She came to the ETC, got her master’s degree, and is now a Disney Imagineer.”
-Randy Pausch
The Last Lecture
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