Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: What's on your resume?
By Steve Brown
The Chronicle (Duke)
01/19/2007

(U-WIRE) DURHAM, N.C. — During my most recent attack of fear about life after graduation, I decided to check out the Career Center web site and stumbled upon the resume section.

There I found a list of sample resumes that I could use as a guide for creating my own. I grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper so I could jot down some notes. The link for the first resume was entitled, "Senior/Engineering." I reluctantly clicked on it and was immediately hit with a barrage of "Genetic Database," "Tissue Engineering" and "Biofluid Mechanics."

When my screaming subsided, I slowly continued down the rest of the page. Joseph scored 1510 on his SATs, interned at the Duke University Medical Center, taught at an elementary school and is proficient in something called C++. I was about to shut off my computer and seriously re-examine my choice to major in English when I noticed that his first header, in giant bold letters, read "EDUCAION."

Moving downward, I found that he also took a course in "Biomatierals." Apparently Joseph was too busy tutoring physics and studying brain waves to remember something important like proofreading. I added "Third grade proficiency in spelling" to the top of my resume list, and moved on to the next link.

Yeung of Raleigh was a double major in political science and classical studies with a 3.3 GPA. After typing in "Yeung first name male or female" into Google and getting no results, I decided to make him male.

Yeung chose to take up the majority of his resume with a section entitled "Leadership Activities." These included the roles of "First Year Advisory Counselor" and "Sponsorship Coordinator for Devil Dash." The last two entries on the list, however, read "VP Communications for Hampton Dormitory" and "Trent Dormitory, Secretary," with "Kept minutes at weekly House Counsel meetings" written beneath the latter.

After examining a map of both East and West campuses, I concluded that there is no Hampton Dormitory at Duke. That's typical Yeung, trying to invent dormitories on his resume. Furthermore, listening to someone else's words and copying them down on a piece of paper hardly qualifies as a leadership activity. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Maybe young Yeung should have added some ethics courses to his schedule before producing this blatant fabrication. I proudly added "Not a liar" to my own resume and continued on.

The final link belonged to Cameron of Islip, New York. A psychology major and Spanish minor, Cameron's resume seemed more like an application for sainthood than an academic summary. United Way Certified Mentor, tutor at an elementary school, Treasurer of Students for Unity Club, Volunteer at Morristown Clinic-the list just didn't end. He may as well have written "Better Person than You" next to his job description at the orphanage

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