My CV has been drinking protein shakes

Not to discount the development of modern technology and its importance in shaping the society we live in today, but I’d still I have to say that THE most useful invention of the 21^st Century would have to be the invention of paper towel [in case you haven’t notice I don’t actually speak English, I speak ‘Hyperbole’]. Paper towel is just amazing. Currently in my household, paper towel is serving so many purposes – tea-towel, toilet paper, comfortable neck pillow, book ends and given the absence of a dryer in my house combined with my inability to use the communal washing line outside, having seen the kinds of underwear my neighbours wear, paper towel is also being used as a normal towel to dry myself post showers. It’s quite handy to mummify yourself each morning in paper towel, momentarily hope that the tight wrapping will shrink your waist line by at least 2mm, then release yourself from your paper towel cocoon, bursting out as a dry butterfly and then flush said disposable paper towel down the toilet[then call the plumber to fix the 38 metre clog of paper towel in the toilet]. 

Forget Newton or Einstein or even Jobs, given all of the magnificent ways in which I have so creatively taken the lowly paper towel and lifted it into the stratosphere of greatness, one could say that I am the only true innovator left on planet Earth. I believe I should put that on my CV….Chief Paper Towel Innovator, Earth Division. It’s a title that has enough words in it to command respect without looking ridiculous and would definitely make me ‘look good on paper’…towel. haha

Like any law student that got swept up in the Career-O-Mania of 3^rd year, by the time I got to actually using my CV it had turned into a novel detailing all of the useless things that I had done, in case it might show that I have ‘communication skills’ or ‘teamwork’…all to apparently impress an Associate at an investment bank in an interview. LOL. Without really trying it’s amazing how quickly your CV can suddenly become a long list of pompous, overstated facts akin to a gym junkie that has never played any actual sport in his life – he may look big and impressive but at the end of the day he can’t do cardio. I am so guilty of this, that I am no position to judge others – in fact anyone who has ‘being placed 7^th in the State Diving Championships in Year 6’ or ‘being named Junior School Sports Captain’ listed on their CV as exemplary achievements [LOL I seem to have peaked in about Year 6], really can’t judge.

But it’s something you just can’t help – everyone around you has all of these amazing scholarships and ridiculously long titles, it’s just so easy to get carried away with thinking that EVERYTHING you do is so AMAZING. Before you know it your CV suddenly looks like it was written by your parents when you were first born and they thought that everything you did was amazing [obvious assumption being that you were also their first child…very different for second children onwards who are just lucky if their mother noticed that they were pregnant with them]. Sometimes I feel that I came out of my mother’s womb looking for new jobs/titles/projects/interests to help build my CV – if I could, I probably would have listed down ‘can work in small spaces’ and ‘good at maintaining parasitic relationships’ in the skills section of my CV. But of course, in the end it’s all meaningless, because your employer sees how well-rounded you are from all the extra-curricular activities you do, applauds you for it, hires you, then spends then next few years bashing all of that individuality out of you by chaining you to a desk and computer.

However I didn’t always approach extra-curricular activities with this CV-building mindset. There was a long time where I actually did things for this really strange reason….a reason which to this day still makes me confused…I did them because I BELIEVED in a certain cause or found it INTERESTING [“WHAAAAT???” I hear you say…yeah I know…I was such a strange kid]. For example, I used to volunteer for quite a few hours a week, raising money and awareness for causes like ‘end child slavery’ or ‘increase access to education in the developing world’. However the beginning of the end started when I was improperly typecast as just another CV-building-non-believing commerce student [you know because it’s IMPOSSIBLE to work in finance and want to change attitudes from the inside]. Then slowly it all began to unravel as the cynic within took over – these initial causes that I thought I was helping out, all ultimately culminated in what I thought was one cause: providing PR opportunities for the founders of where I worked so that they could increase their public profile. Effectively I was volunteering for a bunch of CV-builders that were so dedicated they had started their own not-for-profit solely for the purpose of giving each other inflated, wordy titles, landing their consulting/advisory job then double birding the rest of us as they fucked off.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs to end up at, but it is also just the nature of the beast. In a world of self-inflated egos sailing through the sky and getting undeserved jobs, I guess everyone has to do it. Anyway I should probably get back to organising our wedding – as Project Manager, My Own Wedding, it’s a really important job…and yes that title is going on my CV.