Almostgotit.com

These are from actual resumes:

(from multiple sources: if you know original source, please comment!!)

“Personal: I’m married with 9 children. I don’t require prescription drugs.

“I am extremely loyal to my present firm, so please don’t let them know of my immediate availability.”

“Qualifications: I am a man filled with passion and integrity, and I can act on short notice. I’m a class act and do not come cheap.”

“I intentionally omitted my salary history. I’ve made money and lost money. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. I prefer being rich.”

“Note: Please don’t misconstrue my 14 jobs as ‘job-hopping’. I have never quit a job.”

“Number of dependents: 40.”

“Marital Status: Often. Children: Various.”

“Here are my qualifications for you to overlook.”

“Responsibility makes me nervous.”

“They insisted that all employees get to work by 8:45 every morning. Couldn’t work under those conditions.”

“[left my last job because I] was met with a string of broken promises and lies, as well as cockroaches.”

“I was working for my mom until she decided to move.”

“The company made me a scapegoat – just like my three previous employers.”

“While I am open to the initial nature of an assignment, I am decidedly disposed that it be so oriented as to at least partially incorporate the experience enjoyed heretofore and that it be configured so as to ultimately lead to the application of more rarefied facets of financial management as the major sphere of responsibility.”

“I was proud to win the Gregg Typting Award.”

“Please call me after 5:30 because I am self-employed and my employer does not know I am looking for another job.”

“My goal is to be a meteorologist. But since I have no training in meteorology, I suppose I should try stock brokerage.”

“I procrastinate – especially when the task is unpleasant.”

“Minor allergies to house cats and Mongolian sheep.”

“Personal Interests:  Donating blood. 14 gallons so far.”

“Education: College, August 1880-May 1984.”

“Work Experience: Dealing with customers’ conflicts that arouse.”

“Develop and recommend an annual operating expense fudget.”

“I’m a rabid typist.”

“Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a Midwest chain operation.”

 ((When one might consider hiring a service..))

My little (almost) interview dilemma  continued today.  I guess one ought not to blog about such things until they’re resolved (lest one get dooced).  But suffice it to say that it’s probably not a good idea to get a phone call from one’s daughter’s elementary school right in the middle of a job interview, which of course one has to take due to one’s suspicions (which turn out to be correct) that one’s spouse has neglected to pick up said daughter from said school. 

Furthermore?  It’s also probably not done, in the best circles, to arrive at a job interview without a car, niavely assuming both (a) that said spouse will pick up said daughter and (b) that it will not rain torrentially. 

And finally, it is much preferred that one not end a job interview mid-stream by bumming a ride from one’s interviewers to go rescue one’s daughter.

——
Related Posts:
Confusion Cookies (the story continues)
Nope (the story concludes)
Hanging in, and blonder too (reflection)

Still thinking about Marilee Jones.  A lot.  I’ve been reading lots of good commentary on the situation (some of the best to which I’ve posted links, right column) 

Our world, most especially the academic part of it, is still astonished at (and extremely resistant to) the idea that anyone can be so good at something without a degree.  Even in cases when they can produce two pages of (verifiable) publications and achievements. 

We can huff and puff all we want to about how a degree is a useful standardized measure of dependability or capability.  Or whatever.  We may even be right, most of the time.   But all our noise flies out the window when we have an exception right in front of us, proof in hand, and we turn the other way.  That is the point at which our myth is exposed.  We don’t care about the “dependability and capability” after all – our true fealty is to the degree!

Most of human chauvinism, of course, is based on self-interest, e.g.:  I worked hard on my own degree, and I need it to mean something.  I don’t WANT people without degrees to be as qualified as I am.  (Personally? I also permanently damaged my career in order to hand-raise my children, and thus don’t WANT the children of working parents to be as wonderful and well-adjusted as mine are!)  

Life is about exceptions, though.  And ah, confession is good for the soul. 

I don’t know Marilee Jones personally of course, but any accusation that she was a greedy “opportunist”  I dismiss out of hand.  We all are all of us that, and in this country it’s considered a virtue.

However, I do agree with other commentators that much depends upon whether she is a pathological liar.  I strongly suspect she is not.  I believe, instead, that much of the great good that she has contributed came from an interior acknowledgement of her own mistake.  As penance for it, even.  I think she has been truly sorry for much of the last 28 years. 

I also think it is absolutely wrong, even in the slightest degree, to look backwards now and recast her whole working history in light of this new information (that she had no degree.  And that she lied.)  To do so is fraudulent on our part, and only exposes our own grave disingenuity and chauvinism:

“She didn’t have a degree, so turns out she doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

“She lied, so therefore can say nothing to us at all about how to tell the truth.”

Garbage.

One of the things Marilee wrote about (and yes, we’re on first name basis now) was the importance of integrity.  In a book she co-authored last fall, Less Stress, More Success: A New Approach to Guiding Your Teen Through College Admissions and Beyond,  she writes:

Holding integrity is sometimes very hard to do because the temptation may be to cheat or cut corners.  But just remember that ‘what goes around come around,’ meaning that life has a funny way of giving back what you put out.

This is what I tell my kids, too.  But reading those words now makes me ache.  Just listen to her confession, her fear, even her contrition.  Thing is?  People who cheat quite often do get away with it, and people who don’t cheat quite often get shafted.  Sometimes, unfortunately, ‘virtue has to be its own reward.’  And often a pretty damned shabby one, at that.

Moreover, it’s just cheap for those who “have” to admonish those who “haven’t” for being greedy and ungrateful.

I’ve been hanging around the academy for over 20 years now.  Guys, academics do really ugly things, all of the time.  (as humans do in general, I imagine.)  They plagarize.  Have terrible, exploitative affairs. Torpedo the careers of each other’s Ph.D students out of sheer spite. 

And yes, quite often, they lie. 

According to the New York Times article on the subject of Marilee Jones’ “resignation”, Phillip L. Clay, M.I.T.’s chancellor declared:

There are some mistakes people can make for which ‘I’m sorry’ can be accepted, but this is one of those matters where the lack of integrity is sufficient all by itself.  This is a very sad situation for her and for the institution. We have obviously placed a lot of trust in her.

(The aptly-academic Latin to respond with here would be ”res ipsa loquitur“)

Dr. Clay is probably correct that there is no conceivable way that MIT or any other university could re-absorb Marilee Jones back into its ranks, but “integrity” has very little to do with it.  Jones is now a public embarrassment to them and worse, an irreducible iconoclast.   (as in, literally: “a breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration. a person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition.”)

She’s gotta go. 

In a fair world, though?  Half the rest of ‘em would go with her.

—-
Related Posts: 
MIT really blew it
Marilee Jones joke
How to (Almost) get Marilee
Coming Out: I’m a closet academical

For days now, I’ve been reflecting on something that appeared in one of Penelope Trunk’s recent columns. 

It seems that Trunk spoke to success coach Jim Fannin, who told her “that research has shown that wildly successful people have 1,000 fewer thoughts a day than others, which allows the successful people to have exceptional focus on their goals.”

Well now.  That certainly provides some real food for… well, something in which I’ve been overindulging, apparently.  But I can’t help myself.  You see:  I really LIKE having thoughts.

I was relieved to find out I’m not the only career-minded person who has this strange proclivity.  Maureen Rogers  wrote, in her own marvelous comment at the end of Trunk’s column:

I’m with AlmostGotIt. I LIKE having thoughts, too. After thinking about it, I’ve come to the realization that those of us who are introspective; who really, truly, like to think about things; who are highly analytical are probably just not all that cut out to be risk-taking entrepreneurs. To succeed in an entrepreneurial endeavor, you need to have supreme conviction – and thinkers tend to spend perhaps too much time evaluating risk, playing “what-if”, etc.. A better job for us: chief of staff, advisor to the throne, internal consultant….

“Advisor to the throne.”  I definitely pick that one.   (You know: for now, I mean.)

But perhaps the problem here is that I don’t have the right qualifications to have thoughts.  This possibility has been brought up before. 

At The Institution Which Shall Not Be Named (to pick an example at wild random) there is only a very small allotment allowed for thinkers, and these slots are all taken by highly-trained Thinkologists.   Many of those who have gone through the entire formation process of Thinkology are surprisingly intelligent, diversity-promoting, even iconoclastic thinkers.  However, their thoughts still must be chosen from the approved intelligent,-diversity-promoting,-even-iconoclastic LIST.

Which, needless to say, is entirely unavailable to inflammatory non-thinkologists such as myself.

I decided that Jim Fannin might be onto something.

So I visited his website.  I was glad to find that he has an online quiz,  which of course I took immediately to see if I “[Don’t] Think Like A Champion.”   Here is what I found out:

The results indicate your S.C.O.R.E. Level is dangerously low. You are not in the game. If this score persists either change your goal or approach it in a completely different way. You are on the wrong path.

Wow, this is bad. 

Fortunately, Fannin has a number of products which could help put me back IN the game. Unfortunately, unlike many of his other clients, I don’t have a professional baseballer’s salary to pay for any of them.

But perhaps I can offer him some small repayment-in-kind, at least.  Bob Sutton, a professor at the prestigious Harvard Business School, has developed another little online quiz which, I humbly submit, may be just the thing.

——-

Related Posts:
In defense of thoughts (part 1)
To have as many thoughts as possible (part 2)
The size of thoughts (part 3)

Dear Mr. HR Guy,

Thank you for your letter of April 17th.   This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually large number of highly-qualified rejection letters.  With such a competitive field of candidates, it is simply impossible for me to accept all refusals, however.

Therefore, after careful consideration, I regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me employment with your fine establishment.

Despite your company’s excellent qualifications and previous experience in rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at this time. Therefore I will initiate employment with your firm immediately following my dental appointment next Thursday. I look forward to seeing you then.

Sincerely,
Finally Got It

Yesterday  I was at an awards banquet with about 500 other people.  (Unfortunately, no, it wasn’t for me.  It never is, despite my secret, super-hero identity.) At the end of the evening, The M.C. told us to look for the secret door prize stickers on our chairs.  There were only a couple of prizes for all those people, and so I almost didn’t even look, because I’ve never won anything at all in my whole entire life. 

But I did look, and do YOU KNOW WHAT?  There was a little green sticker, right there on my chair!  That meant I was a WINNER!  I‘d WON!   So here I am, now the proud recipient of Door Prize #3.    It’s very fortunate that I had that earlier experience already this week with being super-famous, so I didn’t even let it go to my head.  Have I told you, by the way, that Door Prize #3 was probably the BEST prize of all because it came from the event’s main sponsor?  Not that I was calculating, or comparing, or anything like that.

——

Someone found this site yesterday by googling: “too lazy to get a job.”  What?  WHAT??!!   Where is that anywhere on this site, may I ask?  This is part of the whole problem, right here.  We worship our working selves so much that now even our search engines are making libelous remarks about the unemployed.

Pursuing employment takes confidence, stuff which is fairly hard to come by when one is jobless to begin with.  Therefore, while we can’t ALL win fabulous door prizes like I have done (not that I want to dwell on that, because it is so irrelevant) we really don’t need to think of ourselves as “lazy” either, especially as that is exactly the most wrong thing for a prospective worker to be.  For people without jobs to believe (or be told) that they are lazy is like divorcees to believe (or be told) that they are unlovable.  It’s the same as believing (or being told) that they are failures, straight up, and that just isn’t going to help anyone.

I am still curious about that googling person, though.  Were they searching for weaponry or armor, I wonder?

While I regret not having had the pleasure of emptying them all of their original contents, (hic), the barrels are pretty fun to fill on a sunny March day, all in good anticipation of the flowers and vegetables we’ll plant in the next couple months.  Here’s how:   First, you cover the bottom with all your UNEMPLOYED plastic recyclables, plus the broken UNEMPLOYABLE Christmas-tree holder (also plastic) which was still in the garage for no good reason.  This fills space up faster, and also makes the barrels lighter.  Ta Da!!  Brilliant, or what?   *BONUS FEATURE*  They smell very interesting when it rains.  A little like  a PUB, Solent, but without all the cigarette smoke ;0)

For Tanya

I forget
What I started out to be at twenty-two, or what I wanted, or who I was
But I hadn’t decided yet when he left for Canada.
So a year later I went to Canada too

And lay there on that borrowed couch staring at the ceiling
From August until January,
Finally leaving those two roach-infested rooms
To work for nothing
Because immigration law said I couldn’t work for money
Or go to school either, as it turns out.

So instead I held a Godbaby
in a filthy abandoned storefront
Made into a church, east end of the city
Full of women who stood,
And children who ran around
Except for the boy pounding
Meaningless notes
On an out-of-tune piano
While the women cut eyes over at me.

This white woman
Trying in vain to sing along
As the only man there preached the christening
Telling us all to repent 
Of female sin that made these babies,
(And drove the men off too, apparently.)

I still didn’t know anything
When my own baby came who didn’t sleep
I couldn’t put him down for almost a year.
I cried at night
Because holding a baby meant I didn’t sleep either
And none of our friends had babies
And my support group lived 3000 miles away.

Immigration finally let me get a job,
So first I nursed the baby while I typed. 
Then I left him with his father which was better still
But I always had to rush home
Because that father had to go back to the library and would be angry but worse
Would be frightened if he couldn’t keep at it keep up keep studying keep working.

We moved to Tennessee,
And I kept writing for Canada
Until once at the printers
My 6-year-old pushed the baby’s stroller
down the stairs
And I realized that
“Mothers! You can work at home!”
Is a myth.

A few more cities, 
and suddenly I was forty.

I sure don’t remember
deciding that by forty I’d be done with everything
Unless I was willing to start all over yet again, right at the bottom
No matter how many times I’ve done it already.

I discovered that many employers prefer beginners in their 20’s
Or employees who don’t mind being beginners forever.

I’d like to point out
That without the kind assistance
Of all the men who promised to pull strings,
The guy in New York would have hired me. 
He invited me to visit
Spend time with his artists
Stay in his apartment
Wear New York Black,
Attend all his festivals.

And considering
How old and unwanted I am in this town
I said

“Maybe…”

But get real.

I’m married, with kids. 

I’m not buying any tickets to Manhattan.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,

They’ve told me
“You’re so talented.” 
“We’d love to see you again.” 
“Excellent presentation.” 
“How soon can you start?” 
“You’ll be hearing from me, first thing Monday.”

But I don’t hear from them.

Not for weeks, I don’t.  Sometimes months.
And when I finally do, it’s been “no” every time. 
Over and over, and I just don’t understand it.

So I freelance a little
Despite the male colleague
who called it “Bitch Work”
And the other
Who asked me to put out his fires 
Without billing for my time.
I billed him anyway, of course,
because I did the work
And he made money because of it.

Another boss called it “gender griping.”

Oh, This Gender is Griping, all right.

They all want the milk
without buying the cow 
And while it’s taken me a while,
I’m tired of breast-feeding so many people
(This is my body, given for you…)

Another torn-up woman had this to say.
There’s no need to buy the whole pig either
When all you want from time to time

Is a little sausage.

—–
Creative Commons images: “Teats” by R Catalano; “Piano” by Gotmikhail; “Fishnets” by Fenchurch;  ”Pig pen” by James Michael Hill; “Stairs” by Compound Eye