I spent an hour tonight working on my resume in preparation for a 20-minute meeting tomorrow morning with an advisor in the Office of Career Services. Basically, they prefer that all resumes are the same and that everyone is very boring. Corporate law firms like to hire boring people without personalities or interests because that means they won't mind spending 21 hours a day at the office working. Not that I want to work for a corporate law firm, but still. I have my answer prepared for when they say something like, "an employer doesn't want to see this stuff about you writing things." My answer: "then I don't think I want to work for them." And that's not as flip an answer as it sounds -- I don't think it's terrible to want to work for an employer who is looking for someone to do the kinds of things I want to do. If what they want is a legal research slave, that's great -- but it's not the job I want, so why should I have to make my resume look like I do. I want a job that uses my passions and skills, not that ignores them. Something else that bothers me -- they want you to shunt everything non-law related into a catch-all category called "Interests." I think that's idiotic and demeaning. "Reading" is an interest. But if someone, I don't know, wrote a book, or performed in the Olympics, or anything real and substantial, that's an activity, a livelihood, an accomplishment. Calling it an interest minimizes it and relegates it to second-class status. I don't like that.

I'll post tomorrow after my meeting, to say whether or not I got to use my prepared answer. I'm betting I will.