Dear potential employer:
I was asked to write a curriculum vitae for you during the break, but I did not truthfully convey the person behind the words you are now reading. The two required pages, lavish in their “education” and “work experience,” allowed no space for a person between its lines. In fact, there does not appear to be space to fit a person in there at all. So here now is an accompanying letter written for a college paper, which many students will choose not to read.
You see, time is precious these days, and we walk delicately along the line of expectation in order to build up this paper self you have just read. You will likely never read this letter in all its trivialities, yet the lessons shared will be carried with me each and every hour into any future position you may be willing to grant. Here is my real education.
I may not be able to speak in algebraic formulations, but I can tell you how to propel over a gate or how to angle your strokes and face slightly downward as a barrel plummets your streamlined body toward the shoreline. I can tell you about the glitter in black sand and the cliffs it shattered from. And how if you put a refrigerator magnet under paper you can make trails of sand snake across paper, and how to curl your toes while traversing steep dunes.
Shakespeare evades me, but I can show you how to source fresh water on mountainsides, how to wade through rivers and how to leap boulders without breaking stride. I can show you how to most efficiently lick melting ice-cream, if clouds are going to soon rain and how to weave baskets out of native flax leaves. I can show you how to build volcanoes out of sand and baking soda and how the tiniest daisies can form chains.
I admit, I lack any labor-intensive work experience, but how about hanging rope swings in trees, riding a bike through meter-high grass and navigating winding gravel roads. What about peeing in the sand without anyone around knowing and designing intricate forts to divert oncoming tides? Or clambering around jagged islands, or linking arms in gale-force winds to make it down mountainsides?
An education is something holistic that shapes and forms a person not only in knowledge and understanding but in action as personality or a broader skill-set develops. In this sense, an education is a life lived. And an education is failure.
A second accompaniment listing many various failures may be a little too long to fit here. An education is also disappointment, pain and loss, although the motives of sharing these is often questionable. We all have failures yet they are often better learned from and left behind.
So please consider these so-called trivialities. Please know that every person applying for a position is not the person who has compacted themselves onto two pages. Look for them between the lines.
– See more at: file:///Volumes/argonaut$/stories/sections/opinion/stories/2012/Jan/13/lessons_from_childhood.html#sthash.TMoQ2qR8.dpuf
I was asked to write a curriculum vitae for you during the break, but I did not truthfully convey the person behind the words you are now reading. The two required pages, lavish in their “education” and “work experience,” allowed no space for a person between its lines. In fact, there does not appear to be space to fit a person in there at all. So here now is an accompanying letter written for a college paper, which many students will choose not to read.
You see, time is precious these days, and we walk delicately along the line of expectation in order to build up this paper self you have just read. You will likely never read this letter in all its trivialities, yet the lessons shared will be carried with me each and every hour into any future position you may be willing to grant. Here is my real education.
I may not be able to speak in algebraic formulations, but I can tell you how to propel over a gate or how to angle your strokes and face slightly downward as a barrel plummets your streamlined body toward the shoreline. I can tell you about the glitter in black sand and the cliffs it shattered from. And how if you put a refrigerator magnet under paper you can make trails of sand snake across paper, and how to curl your toes while traversing steep dunes.
Shakespeare evades me, but I can show you how to source fresh water on mountainsides, how to wade through rivers and how to leap boulders without breaking stride. I can show you how to most efficiently lick melting ice-cream, if clouds are going to soon rain and how to weave baskets out of native flax leaves. I can show you how to build volcanoes out of sand and baking soda and how the tiniest daisies can form chains.
I admit, I lack any labor-intensive work experience, but how about hanging rope swings in trees, riding a bike through meter-high grass and navigating winding gravel roads. What about peeing in the sand without anyone around knowing and designing intricate forts to divert oncoming tides? Or clambering around jagged islands, or linking arms in gale-force winds to make it down mountainsides?
An education is something holistic that shapes and forms a person not only in knowledge and understanding but in action as personality or a broader skill-set develops. In this sense, an education is a life lived. And an education is failure.
A second accompaniment listing many various failures may be a little too long to fit here. An education is also disappointment, pain and loss, although the motives of sharing these is often questionable. We all have failures yet they are often better learned from and left behind.
So please consider these so-called trivialities. Please know that every person applying for a position is not the person who has compacted themselves onto two pages. Look for them between the lines.
– See more at: file:///Volumes/argonaut$/stories/sections/opinion/stories/2012/Jan/13/lessons_from_childhood.html#sthash.TMoQ2qR8.dpuf