Now that I am teaching courses with 300 students, I am getting so many reference requests. So here are couple of points on this topic:

• When you write to ask a recommendation letter, give all necessary info! It is not very helpful, nor impressive, when someone says “I got courses from you, would you write a reference letter for me?“. I may be teaching 500 students in one year, so you should give all necessary info for me to decide (what courses you got from me, what grades you got, or how I know you, your GPA etc), so I can return an answer immediately without unnecessary back and forth emailing.
• On this topic, start your emails directly stating why you are writing. No need for the now infamous line: “I hope this email finds you well”, which does not even have an equivalent in Turkish, so it is all the more unnecessary.
• Once I accept to write a letter, I give a guideline and a sample letter (with my letter-head on top) with parts highlighted (to be replaced), and ask for a draft from student, basically a file that lists the necessary info, and is named by your name. Some students send me a totally unformatted document and some parts missing or typos remaining. Hımm, no need to say that this does not leave a good impression. Please do your best to understand the guideline and reduce back-and-forth emails when everyone is so short on time.
• Finally, my forever suggestion: Be good in at least one subject and have at least one prof who would write a good letter for you. No matter how small or niche, if you are very good in something, you can choose to follow that path and you can be good at what you do and also like it more because probably you liked it in the first place (which is why you are good at it, and vice versa).