While we all run headlong toward the end of the term, a quiet transformation is taking place on campus. The seniors with the most – er – unique styles are suddenly turning up with shaved faces, fewer piercings, more form-fitting (and less hole-decorated) clothing, and combed hair.
I sense job interviews in the offing.
Comments closedAn odd thing has happened. For the past several months, whenever I dream of work stuff (which is more often than I’ll admit in print), certain members of LSW are just… there. I’ll be in the middle of a dream meeting with my dream department, but in addition to the people who are in my real-life department there’ll be a couple of LSW people sitting there with us. We’ll all be sitting in our regular meeting spot in the library, tossing around ideas, planning big plans, talking about recent classes, and throwing out anecdotes about the reference desk. Sometimes LSW people will pop into my dream office to ask about something or to tell me about questions they just got, just like my real-life co-workers do. And all of this seems perfectly natural in my dreams. It’s not till I wake up that I realize these people don’t actually work at my library.
4 CommentsAn interesting idea sprouted over at Llyfrgellydd and was taken up at Guardienne of the Tomes. Here it is:
Post a cover letter that you wrote. It can be terrible, it can be wonderful, it can be the one that got you a job. But post it with the idea that other librarians (new, old, and not-yet-to-be) can learn something from it.
Well, I debated joining in, because I don’t feel like I have a great example of a letter, and I cringe whenever I read the ones I sent out (yes, I have copies of them… all of them…). But I’ve decided I’m OK with having people point at laugh if it helps someone figure out their writing style and what to include in or exclude from a cover letter.
The letter I’ve chosen is the one that I sent in when applying for my current job, which is my first job out of library school. I didn’t have much library experience (I’d worked part time in a public library and part time in an academic library for the past year) so I was trying to make a case for myself by tying together my tutoring (read “instruction”) and other instruction experience (I’d won an award for movement instruction), my public service experience at a small, independent bookstore I’d worked at for several years (I’d done reader’s advisory, ordering, and almost everything else you could do at that bookstore) and my commitment to the disciplines I’d be serving in this new job. I also wanted to be sure they knew that I understood the idea of the liberal arts and that I knew about this particular college.
I’d been advised to have a letter of no longer than one page (which I now know isn’t necessarily true, especially for academic positions), and to close with an “I’ll call you” statement… which I agonized about for longer than I care to admit, because it seemed so incredibly cocky to me. But I dutifully followed the advice. All I can say is that I’m glad at least somebody here didn’t hold it against me.
I should also say that I wrote my resumé much more like a bulleted cover letter than many resumés I’ve seen, so I didn’t duplicate that here in my letter. I’m not sure if that was wise. All I’ll say here is that under each of my jobs listed on the resumé I placed examples or quotes from people or anything else I could think of to show that the experiences I’d had at these other (mostly non-library) jobs could translate easily to the job I hoped to obtain. I figured anyone could guess the job duties of a tutor or book seller, but what they needed from me was a direct translation into this job.
So, without further ado, here it is:
January 26, 2005
[Future supervisor’s name]
[library and address]Dear [future supervisor],
One of [the library’s] evening supervisors, my brother [brother’s name], recently explained the exciting work you are doing to increase the library’s effectiveness and visibility as the cultural and educational center of [the college]. As he spoke, I knew I wanted to be a part of your team.
I am addicted to learning, especially at a college like [this one] where students are encouraged to explore the intersections between disciplines. My personal research explores the dynamic fusion of history, philosophy, literary theory, language, art, and social context in the literary expressions of various times and cultures.
Learning is so important to me that I work vigorously to share it. I have been a highly successful tutor and instructor for the past seven and a half years because I approach instruction with creativity, enthusiasm, and humor.
I am also adept at information marketing and have eight years of experience providing superior customer service. I am especially good at working with “challenging” customers and with customers from other cultures and linguistic backgrounds.
I think I would make an excellent addition to your team and look forward to further conversations about the ways our goals complement each other. I will call you next week to see when we can talk in more detail about how my abilities will benefit your library.
Sincerely yours,
Iris Jastram
Enclosure: Resume and References
It feels rather like letting you peek under my bed to see if I’ve swept there recently (no, I haven’t). All I can say is that I tried. I tried hard. I probably tried too hard. But it got me a phone interview, which led to an on-site interview, which led to a job.
2 CommentsIt’s always fun when I sit in my office and get to hear students practicing their class presentations outside my door. We have a large SMART board and some comfy couches right there, so it’s a natural place for that kind of activity, but somehow I never tire of hearing these run-throughs. It’s really one of the only times I see the fruits of research activities, since we almost never see student papers.
This morning I mused on the natural progressions I see in all kinds of communication skills, and that I remember going through myself during college and graduate school. There’s an interesting phase we go through where we imitate the rhetorical structures and even the mannerisms of some idealized Smart Person. We try on jargon and clump around in it like we did our grandparents’ shoes when we were young. We start questioning our conclusions and worrying that they’re self-evident. We aren’t quite sure which evidence might be too self-evident, so some key pieces of it never make it into the final product. (Just as a side note, I love watching undergrads negotiate this phase because it’s a great way to learn what it is that they see happening when accomplished scholars perform their work.)
The next phase is one of extreme confidence. This is when we think that our readers or listeners probably pay the same amount of attention to the words, phrases, arguments, and conclusions of our work that we are learning to pay to theirs as we pour over their works in preparation for assignments and lectures. This is when formal communication becomes less of an act of dress-up and more of a game or, in the worst cases, a contest. “If my readers can hold this allusion and that metaphor and this key phrase and that piece of evidence in their minds all at the same time, they’ll understand that I’m being witty in this statement and the whole piece will be even more interesting for them to read.” This kind of writing is fun. I remember the exhilaration of weaving together fine works of analytical art and handing them in, knowing full well that my professors would enjoy a carefully and consciously crafted piece of writing. And in some cases, this is the style of writing that particular audiences did want. But little by little, I realized that not all audiences are thrilled by the prospect of performing mental gymnastics. Which brings me to the next phase…
There’s a fine art to writing in a way that clearly communicates what you want to say without forcing your audience to work at understanding you. This is the stage where writers start deliberately trying to misunderstand their own writing (knowing full well that somebody will take that beautiful sentence the wrong way) and revising their work to make misunderstandings as rare as possible. And it’s not just about misunderstandings. Remember those comments that just said “awkward” in the margins of papers you got back from professors? This is the stage where that all begins to make sense. Whereas before, respecting your audience meant trusting that they could follow you through complex writing, now respecting your audience means knowing that they probably could follow you if they wanted to, but that they’re much happier if you don’t cause them fatigue.
This is the kind of writing I aspire to, but it’s much, much harder than the complex writing I practiced in grad school.
Having said that, watch as I glibly push “Publish Post” without re-reading this lengthy piece of writing about writing….
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