this is why you have to stay in school

As most of you know I'm in college right now.  I'm doing really well in school and I'm pretty proud of myself.  The only thing I've gotten a "B" in this time around is one of my math courses and it's just a straight up miracle that I passed it.  I'm terrible at math.  I actually have dyscalculia but I try not to use that as an excuse since I also have dyslexia and I read and write like a maniac.  The point is that math doesn't make any sense to me at all. In real life I have a calculator AND a mother-in-law who has taught math for more years than I've been alive so I'm not terribly worried about it.  This is not about math though, this is about school.

Right now I'm being forced to turn in a cover letter, resume, and follow up letter "portfolio" for my final pre-req class before I can start my program.  Herein lies the problem.  I look TERRIBLE on paper.  I'm not being cute or sarcastic.  Here is the truth about me, I really really hate doing things that I don't want to do.  

To begin let's start where most people start: school.  Well let's see, I dropped out of high school when I was 16, I was homeschooled for a year and then I took my GED.  I also got pregnant somewhere in between that amount of time.  I DID go back to college for a quarter after getting my GED but I wasn't serious and I ended up failing a class (thanks for messing up our GPA young Jacki). I am back in school now obviously, and I have been since 2010 and this time I'm serious.

My only job experience that lasted longer than one month was when I worked at a movie theater for a year when I was 16.  It completely ruined me for life because it gave me some seriously flawed expectations of what "working" was going to be. We were all young and no one was really telling anyone what to do.  The theater was shitty & literally falling in so no one really took work very seriously, we got to keep drinks under the counters, we took smoke breaks whenever we wanted to smoke (even the people who didn't actually smoke), we played with  Ouija boards, we sometimes did things to mess with the customers like hitting the floor when a movie dropped and the bell rang.  It was all good fun but seriously left me with completely ridiculous expectations of what the real workforce was going to be like.

Other than that "job experience" I worked at a donut shop for 3 days once before I quit, I worked in a money counting place for about a month before I got fired, and I worked as a hostess at a restaurant  for 2 months before I got fired.  The last one actually wasn't my fault. I got fired because they thought I was kidding about being sick and just skipping work & when I came in spending all of my time in the bathroom.  A month later I'd find out that I was so sick because I was pregnant but it was too little info too late.

I have never volunteered for anything in my life.  I was never in any groups or clubs in school.  I did do dance team/ flag team but I hardly think they'd find that impressive.

If you want to find things impressive about me you really need to go backward in time.  I won tons of trophies as a kid for dance and pageants, I played on a terrible basketball team, I won the 4th grade social science fair, I was a cheerleader for a year, I got published in a book of poetry, I played piano (and my teacher made me play one handed after a basketball injury left me with a broken arm, he had a stroke and could only play with 1 hand so I had no excuse), I starred in several school and church plays, I taught Vacation Bible School. Would you hire this kid?  Because I totally would!

I think resumes should reflect who you are instead of what you've accomplished...or both if you are really proud of your work accomplishments.  For instance, I would much rather read a nice little list of informal descriptions of a person than a list of things they've done academically.  Maybe it's just me but I think that:

"I like drinking wine, hula hooping, watching sci-fi, reading books, spending time with my husband and son, reading, blogging, painting, and Hello Kitty." 

is a much better description of the person that I'm hiring than something like this:

"I went to SUPER IMPORTANT SCHOOL, here's my paper to prove it!  I also worked at IMPORTANT COMPANY for a very very long time!"

This person could really be saying:

"Look I have the paper to prove I went to school! I totally passed with a 'D'!  Also my dad's grandfather started a company and I'm on the payrolll so it looks like I've done something with my life! Sometimes I come in to flirt with the secretary and steal lunches out of the staff room refrigerator.  I'm basically waiting for my family to die off so I inherit their fortune."

The really crappy thing about all of this is that I have accomplished certain things, but I don't have any paper to prove it.  I am constantly teaching myself new things just because I like learning but being self taught doesn't go very far on paper.  I know HTML and CSS coding, I'm currently teaching myself JavaScript, and I'm a photoshop ninja. Yes, I can fix your computer, it probably isn't actually broken. I know how to use Linux.  I can tell you more than most doctors know about autism, gluten, casein, enzymes, and vaccines. I know a lot about various feral children. I can argue something I don't even believe for hours and have you think you believe it in the end.  I can rollerskate forward and backward. I can slay dragons (okay that's USUALLY only in video games).  My point is that I have a lot of knowledge that is sometimes useful but because I haven't gone to school for it it apparently isn't "good enough".

I do know one thing though.  It's what keeps me going. And that one thing is this: When that dragon shows up at your place of business you are seriously going to regret not having hired me.