“But are you thinking outside the box?”
I wouldn’t make this up: it’s as stupid and depressing to write as it was to read. It’s not that’s it’s a cliché, it’s that saying it’s a cliché has itself become cliché. It’s like making fun of yuppies or complicated Starbucks orders. WHASSUP! Talk to the Hand. Who let the Dogs Out?
You see? The irony expiration date has passed - there is literally no way to react to people who speak like this without becoming, on some level, a person who speaks like that. It is a Godfather-II-type situation. The more you try to get out, the more it pulls you back in.
I am in a world that is in no way my own, I think, hitting "reply". I am in a foreign land, with people who do not speak my language. The trees are made of non-fat half-caff soy chai latte and the man in the moon is shaking it like a Polaroid picture. In this land, I just hang around and watch, excluded. Sadly, unfunnily, like a kitten from a tree.
What's MORE sad, of course, is that I actually have been thinking outside the box, as I detail for Jeff.
I mean, I'm hanging out at Starbucks with resumes casually on-hand and chatting up every Blackberry loser that sidles up to the toppings bar. What's that if not outside the box? If you knew how I felt about Starbucks and then saw me doing what I've been doing, you would conclude that I am thinking so far outside the box, I wouldn't even know what a box was anymore. Seriously, you could come up to me with a box and I'd be like "what is that reductive problem-solving paradigm? What do you call that in your formulaic stick-to-the-program culture?" If a box was here
I would be here
Etc.
Obviously Jeff didn't think so much about my box-destroying abilities though, because he called me up later in the day. "Maybe you need to think outside the education box," he said. "Maybe if you're applying for non-academic jobs, you need to show your employers that you can leave the box marked "ex-academic"". Translation: it wouldn't be a bad idea to start leaving out the irrelevant details of my work history, including my grad degrees.
What does life have in store for a 29-year-old with a BA in English, no work history to speak of, and a fierce ability to see the world in box-free terms? Stay tuned!
6 comments:
Maybe you should sell t-shirts that say LEAVE THE BOX ALONE
or
BOX INSIDE THE THINK
or
THE BOX: IT WAS ONLY TRYING TO SHELTER US FROM CHAOS AND MEANINGLESSNESS
T-shirt sales and google ad revenue could be (relatively) substantial!
PS: The leaving-grad-degrees-off-resumes, while sometimes necessary I guess (oh how the admission irks), is just really grr-argh in general. "Over-qualified" never made sense the first time the concept was explained to me, and it still doesn't. When you have 'proof' of your extreme merit, a rejection of meritocracy is just really bitter to encounter.
I blame elementary school teachers who encourage bright students and feed their egos.
I know right? What's "overqualified"? Don't you want someone who is MORE than qualified to do the job? I don't get it.
Also: "Think outside the box" = Derrida, now that I think about it. In a boxy way.
The problem with the Derrida box, for me, is that I feel angry, scared, and confused when I'm in it.
Honestly, why should qualifications matter, as long as you've met the minimum?
If anything, having extra qualifications means you can exceed performance expectations in employer-pleasing ways. I'm putting my MA and my writing experience to awesome use at my $9/hour 12 week library internship I've got at the moment, and my ego is holding its stomach and saying "no more!" from all the praise it's being fed.
Who wants to employ a barely-competent un-motivated semi-moron? Lots of people, apparently. Smart, hard-working, motivated types 'cause trouble, with their thinkin' and their bein' all active and such.
If only there was some bleedthrough to academia. I'd love to get a tenure-track position *because* I'd barely published, had a threadbare CV, etc. etc. etc.
Thanks for writing this.
Post a Comment