Thursday, December 18, 2014

20141218.0748

Matters seem not to have improved...

I spent a fair bit of time yesterday filling out job applications--and I anticipate doing so again today. After writing scores if not hundreds of cover letters, I feel like I have a fair handle on how to churn them out; certainly the first and last paragraphs of each read along a formula, while those in the middle follow predictable patterns as do the kinds of jobs for which I apply (medievalist or generalist and generally teaching-heavy). It was quite the annoyance, then, to realize that I had sent several out with typographical errors embedded in them--which I only realized after sending them off. There is, after all, no better time to proofread than after it is too late to do fix any problems...I suppose I will have to be more careful and more diligent with the letters I send out today and in the days to come.

Such errors as I have made do not argue well for me, of course. Errors argue well for nobody, as they bespeak ignorance, inattention, unconcern, or some combination thereof, but typographical errors in an application for a job of writing or of teaching writing show up as particularly egregious. Prevailing conceptions of "good writing," after all, include such phrases as "free of error," and it is upon such phrases that many people fixate. Hence the grammar Nazi, and hence some of Zawacki's comments (to which I return more often than I had ever thought I would). There cannot be any mistakes in a piece of writing and have it still be "good" in the eyes of many--including those who hire--regardless of what the "error-free" content may be.

It is some comfort to think that the letters may not be read, though. My experience of applying for work in academia and elsewhere suggests that I will never head back from most of the places to which I have sent materials, either from the initial contacts or from the occasional attempts at following up on them. Emails and phone calls disappear into black holes of bureaucracy and "other things to do," and I am long past the point of being angry or annoyed at the fact; it is as it is, and I am not in a position to change it. (Seriously, given the several hundred applications that come in for each position, I understand the lack of response.) And even those that do get read will likely be skimmed, so that it is possible that the errors I missed will also be missed by the readers, who are rushing to plow through applications no less than I did in sending them. So it may not matter that I have the occasional flub.

Then again, it might well matter--and it is a legitimate concern for the kinds of jobs to which I apply. And it occurs to me that I perhaps made other errors which I did not realize, having one or more in each set of materials I have sent out. If true, it would explain many things...not that that helps.

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