Looking good on paper

I, like many other Lost2005ers, stepped across the threshold of Assembly Hall to find myself captive in a little place known as Never-neverjob. And, while I have some employment prospects, until I get that handshake, I'll remain in the netherworld of "looking good on paper." \nAs I sat in front of my resume a few days ago, I made a few small but significant revisions. The words "degrees to be awarded in" backspaced into oblivion, and in their place, a definitive "Bachelor of Arts in journalism and political science" seized the page. \nWith a couple of keystrokes, I defined myself, not to my friends, not to my family, but to the people I have yet to meet, people whom I hope have open minds and open wallets. \nIn our resumes, we are invincible -- the epitomes of perfection: award-winning, scholarly and experienced. A grocery list of successes without a single mention of failure. \nBut resumes are not our souls; they are our shields. We hide behind them, cross our fingers and tell our future bosses our best quality is being a "people person" and our worst is being a "workaholic." \nWe've become so preoccupied with strategizing our character that we've forgotten to actually have some. To be poetry. To relish in our idiosyncrasies. To identify ourselves with meaningful words instead of dogma. When we find ourselves spewed out from college into the vomitorium -- or as my father refers to it, "the job market," we are forced to define ourselves, on no more than one piece of paper, to people who do not know us, were not with us to witness our achievements and will never know what resides in our white indents between the typed leads. \nIn my resume, the most climactic event was a bullet point's metamorphosis from desperately wanting degrees to actually having them. \nBut in my life, I certainly hope that a title was not my defining moment. I hope it has been the adventures, the struggles and the anticipation of my dreams that has punctuated who I am and who I one day hope to be. \nUnfortunately, when it comes to the real world, my whole, your whole, is only equal to the sum of our words. As a writer, I find resumes to be the antithesis of my craft. While words can be manipulated to form an infinite number of unique ideas, resume words are manipulated to fit protocol. The more we carbon-copy ourselves, the more the imprint of our words grows dimmer. \nColorless green ideas sleep furiously. \nIt's funny how a group of words can form a complete sentence yet mean so little. \nNoam Chomsky once proposed that words are symbols with associated properties, but even when used abiding by the laws of grammar, they cannot function when detached from meaning. \nWe, too, cannot function detached from meaning. In the increasingly competitive vomitorium, we, as individuals, have been reduced to generic postings on www.Monster.com and "letters of recommendation upon request." The vomitorium is impersonal and as thin and shallow as the resume paper we feed it. \nIt is not up to our future employers to attach the meanings to our words, but for us to grow stronger in the memory of them and tote them with us when we brave the real world. \nWe need to express ourselves and search for the careers that suit us, not suck in our gut and hope we fit into someone else's suit.\nI, and the other 2005ers, need meaning. We need personal. But most of all, we need unlimited words to refine us.