Monday, April 02, 2007

They are killing me

The community college applications are overwhelming and exhausting. The forms are long, excessive, and repetitive. I used another set of similar but different forms that I filled out for another community college job to fill out the forms for this job. I noticed two typos and also that my jobs were not listed in exact chronological order.

Both sets of forms want me to list every single relevant job since college. In my case, this means 17 jobs, and that doesn't include the jobs that aren't relevant to the position or temporary work or the jobs I did in between the relevant jobs. So, I have had 17 jobs relevant to this position since I graduated from GW in May 2000. That is a lot of jobs. I am so employable! So versatile! So adaptable! And yet they only give me 4 spaces, so I had to recreate their forms to accommodate my job history. This leads me to worry that perhaps I am not the kind of person they want to hire, even though of course I am a fabulous teacher and like community college students because they are diverse and interesting and have had experience in the world. And I am also office worthy. I can file! I can write grant proposals. I can bear staff meetings (sort of).

I have had many jobs. Do I really want any job this much? Answer: no. However, I will fill out the forms anyway, because I must be employed. And even though I am already employed, the only reason I am employed is because I am constantly seeking employment and applying for jobs.

If there were some other better option I wished to entertain, I would be entertaining it. I like my job life now, but it is important to remember that most job life sucks, even when you like it. I don't believe in running away, and anyway, anyone who's ever run away knows that running away is impossible. Most problems resurface eventually, despite geography.

2 comments:

Stanley Bishop Burhans said...

Those forms are a drag, yeah. But maybe you should streamline your job history--down to 9 or 10 jobs. Because the thing about those job ap forms, which I fear and believe is true, is that no one reads them. They read the CV instead, and the forms are just to be filed in Personnel.

I mean, I can't prove this, but it is a powerful intuition. . .

K. Lorraine Graham said...

Well, even if your powerful intuition isn't correct, which it may be, I've clearly got to scale back....no way am I filling in 17 jobs!