resume résumé If there's one thing I hate, it's revising my résumé. It's just so painful. As if I don't feel inadequate enough as it is, now I have to commit these inadequacies to paper and watch in horror as the skimpy, scraggly sum of my life's accomplishments unfurls on heavyweight paper, action verbs and all. For some reason, I didn't quite think I'd have to dust off the old girl again, but apparently, we need a CV (fancy academic abbreviation for résumé, standing for curriculum vitae) for residency applications and for soliciting letters of recommendation. Really, it should have been obvious to me that a CV was required for these things, but I guess I've just been blocking out reality again. My résumé from college was no thing of beauty, but it was all right. No huge awards or honors, but cushy in its own little way. What I lacked in meaningful academic recognition, I like to think I made up for in extracurriculars and fancy wording--even though now, looking back, I find it a little embarrassing that I put "historical and metaphysical coursework in Philosophy" in my curriculum description, when I hardly even know what that means. The really scary thing about writing a medical school CV is that they actually expect you to have something substantial to put on it. Research experience. Publications. Names of impoverished countries in which you've started clinics. Names of prominent billionaires with whom you're friendly. (Heh. Just kidding. Not that it wouldn't help grease the wheels, though.) So unfortunately, I don't have any of those things going on for me. I mean, I've done some things with my time here, but unlike in college, where I had my finger in many pots, in medical school, I've tried to keep my little free time as non-medical as possible. Which is great for the soul, but "watching TV and drinking beer with friends" really doesn't look that great on a CV. Even if you reword it ("engaged in daily critical analysis of the climate of modern popular culture and facilitated the reinforcement of collegial ties with provision of social lubricant") it still doesn't look that good. Sometimes I wonder if people just make up things to put on their CVs. If it's not some glaringly huge lie that can easily be exposed, who's going to know? For instance, putting on your CV that you won the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year: bad. Putting on your CV that you were the President of the Orthopedic Surgery Student Interest Group (so long as you actually do have an interest and working knowledge of Orthopedic Surgery with which to chat up your interviewer): who's going to be the wiser? Far back stuff could be even easier to forge. Who's going to go fact-checking to see if you really, really were the President of the Photography Club in college? If you rowed intramural crew? If you were fucking President of your high school class, for chrissake? No one would know. Well, sometimes they find out, I guess. There was that one story about a medical student at Yale who went through a few years of medical school before the administration somehow caught on to the fact that his entire application had been a lie. CV, scores, transcript, letters of recommendation, all forged. So they kicked him out. But it was a good long time before they got wise. Maybe to some people, they never get wise. Sometimes I look at people in my class and wonder. I wasn't thinking about forging anything on my CV. Honestly. I was just thinking about how easy it would be to do it. And then I thought about putting down that I was high school Senior Class President and Editor-in-Chief of the school paper (both statements are actually true, if you can believe it, how very Andrea Zuckerman)...but then I realized that padding a medical school CV with high school accomplishments would just be too, too pathetic, even for me. xo Michelle |
Tuesday . May 7 . 2002 . 11:12pm |
resume résumé If there's one thing I hate, it's revising my résumé. It's just so painful. As if I don't feel inadequate enough as it is, now I have to commit these inadequacies to paper and watch in horror as the skimpy, scraggly sum of my life's accomplishments unfurls on heavyweight paper, action verbs and all. For some reason, I didn't quite think I'd have to dust off the old girl again, but apparently, we need a CV (fancy academic abbreviation for résumé, standing for curriculum vitae) for residency applications and for soliciting letters of recommendation. Really, it should have been obvious to me that a CV was required for these things, but I guess I've just been blocking out reality again. My résumé from college was no thing of beauty, but it was all right. No huge awards or honors, but cushy in its own little way. What I lacked in meaningful academic recognition, I like to think I made up for in extracurriculars and fancy wording--even though now, looking back, I find it a little embarrassing that I put "historical and metaphysical coursework in Philosophy" in my curriculum description, when I hardly even know what that means. The really scary thing about writing a medical school CV is that they actually expect you to have something substantial to put on it. Research experience. Publications. Names of impoverished countries in which you've started clinics. Names of prominent billionaires with whom you're friendly. (Heh. Just kidding. Not that it wouldn't help grease the wheels, though.) So unfortunately, I don't have any of those things going on for me. I mean, I've done some things with my time here, but unlike in college, where I had my finger in many pots, in medical school, I've tried to keep my little free time as non-medical as possible. Which is great for the soul, but "watching TV and drinking beer with friends" really doesn't look that great on a CV. Even if you reword it ("engaged in daily critical analysis of the climate of modern popular culture and facilitated the reinforcement of collegial ties with provision of social lubricant") it still doesn't look that good. Sometimes I wonder if people just make up things to put on their CVs. If it's not some glaringly huge lie that can easily be exposed, who's going to know? For instance, putting on your CV that you won the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year: bad. Putting on your CV that you were the President of the Orthopedic Surgery Student Interest Group (so long as you actually do have an interest and working knowledge of Orthopedic Surgery with which to chat up your interviewer): who's going to be the wiser? Far back stuff could be even easier to forge. Who's going to go fact-checking to see if you really, really were the President of the Photography Club in college? If you rowed intramural crew? If you were fucking President of your high school class, for chrissake? No one would know. Well, sometimes they find out, I guess. There was that one story about a medical student at Yale who went through a few years of medical school before the administration somehow caught on to the fact that his entire application had been a lie. CV, scores, transcript, letters of recommendation, all forged. So they kicked him out. But it was a good long time before they got wise. Maybe to some people, they never get wise. Sometimes I look at people in my class and wonder. I wasn't thinking about forging anything on my CV. Honestly. I was just thinking about how easy it would be to do it. And then I thought about putting down that I was high school Senior Class President and Editor-in-Chief of the school paper (both statements are actually true, if you can believe it, how very Andrea Zuckerman)...but then I realized that padding a medical school CV with high school accomplishments would just be too, too pathetic, even for me. xo Michelle |
