the old-school guestbook archives
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the writing-of-the-resume thang ~ November 17, 2003 - 1:31 a.m. I've been sitting here most of the night, listening to this american life and slowly updating my resume. which really means writing a new one. I can't ever seem to hold on to them after I write them and send them off to some job I think I want to get. I leave them saved on disks that malfunction or get lost, I abandon them on the desktops of other people's computers. most often, I just don't know where to find them when it's time. or the one I do find is just so totally unsuitable that I wind up starting from scratch. and so. I write resumes. over and over again. and I hate it. every. single. time. part of the problem is that if I ever put all my jobs on one piece of paper, it would look like a salvador dali painting. let's just say I'm deeply, deeply aqaurian. project coordinator for the ACLU, clown, ranch hand, ESL teacher... it just goes on and on. so I have to essentialize, to tweak. figure out which of my multifarious experiences make for good juju for any given job. that I think I want to have. thinking, wanting, having. often very different things. and that two page limit makes me crazy. I just don't boil down to something quite so concise. and there's the additional problem of the fact that the majority of my work experiences have been in the three-to-six month time frame. I blame antioch college for that. at antioch, you did something new every three to six months-- often moving across the country or around the world. a lot of antiochians can't really settle down after that. some rearrange their furniture every three months, just to keep from going insane. me, I take off. kind of a long-range-plans version of ADD. up close, I'm fine. I can sit still for hours. just not for years. so, I tweak, I distill, I manipulate the light. so it all looks more or less good. so it makes someone want to talk to me. about some job. that I think I might want to have. then there's always the moral conundrum I hit at the "education" section of the thing. where I have to decide whether or not to address the fact that while I finished all my coursework, I never got around to jumping through all the hoops I needed to in order to get my degree actually I go through this every time. and every time I hate it. the whole process, the tweaking, the distillation, the manipulation, the high-flown language. and yet I'm realizing. that with all the amazing things I've been able to do in my life so far, there's so much more I could be doing. so much more that could be within my reach. because I've discovered that I can make things happen. but some of those things (and truly, only some) require a resume. in the beginning. and if I can get the interview, I can often get the job. that I think I want to have. having a resume is like having a key that opens only certain doors. but keys, keys are good. open doors even better-- whether or not you actually choose to walk through them in the end. I hate this. this whole process. writing-of-the-resume thang. but I like keys. and so.
(((rings))) |