Don’t Skimp on the Thank You

It’s graduation season and that means gifts. Graduating from college or high school is an accomplishment. It is not graduation from preschool, lower school or middle school. Those are just moving up ceremonies and are not gift occasions. A gift for those is like a participation trophy, but the rules are suspended for grand parents.

I never got a gift for graduations from parents or grandparents, although I still have a beautiful sterling perpetual calendar I got from Deicy Stockwell, Stori’s Mom, for my graduation from Walkers. In our family getting your education was the gift and I fully understand that now.

I had a grandmother who was a stickler for thank you notes. One year an unnamed relative, who was younger than me, did not send a thank you note for her Christmas presents. My grandmother informed my mother that child would not receive a gift next year due to this oversight. It was tough love.

I think I have taken after my grandmother, but in an even more picky way. I received a thank you note that was so generic it could have been written in advance to be given to anyone who gave the grad a gift. The salutation was, “Hi.” Followed by, “Thank you for the gift.” (No mention of our specific gift, which was very generous.) A bit about the grad and the a closing with a bad grammar mistake.

Now I am a horrible speller, as all readers of my blog remind me of and I make plenty of grammar mistakes, some are actually stylistic choices, but still I make others. This mistake was something a college grad should have gotten right.

So I will forgive the grammar, although it does not bode well for the institution that conveyed the diploma, but the generic thank you, that could have been to someone who gave a ten dollar gift card or a new car was disappointing. Even the addressing on the envelope was wrong.

Like my grandmother I will hold back on future gifts. I know getting kids to write thank you notes is hard, but by the time they get to high school and certainly college they should learn to do it with a little more thought. You should at least thank the givers by name, mention the gift and how you might use it, even if that might be a stretch and then you can talk about yourself and your plans. This skill is something you need to use your whole life, like when you go to interview for jobs, or receive wedding gifts. The big moments that require a little tiny bit of effort on your part because you are being judged on your thank you.