Cover Letters From Hell

Parent Cafe
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<p><a href=“http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Careers/story?id=2582776&page=1[/url]”>http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Careers/story?id=2582776&page=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Funny.</p>

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<p>It would be funny to see an equivalent set of college application cover letters.</p>

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<p>Maybe this was someone who used AP credits in English to skip over required courses, and then proceeded to jump right into major requirements, and never looked back…</p>

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<p>Unfortunately not so funny. I recently received some emails from an Ivy graduate which twice contained the word “grammer.” Argh…</p>

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<p>I recently received a resume that had as its stated objective: “To better serve the needs of my family and also solidify my financial future.”</p>

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<p>Well, the author was honest! LOL.</p>

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<p>I wonder if they have a followup story on the resumes that were attached. LOL</p>

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<p>At my first job out of school (publishing,) the advertising director of our division had a “Resume of the Week” bulletin board. Great fun for us grossly underpaid drones and a chance to feel superior to those who didn’t make the job cut.</p>

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<p>I worked for a firm in California called The Arrroyo Group - we used to collect mail addressed to all sorts of things. I think “The Royal Group” was my favorite.</p>

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<p>I know that my kids do not have anything like the grounding in grammar and spelling that I did, even though they went to schools of equivalent quality or better. When I see papers they got back from teachers, the papers are full of uncorrected grammar, syntax, and spelling errors (the latter, thanks to Spellcheck, are usually misspellings that happen to constitute a different word). I gave my son a hard time about split infinitives on a draft of a college essay, and he swore that no one had ever told him not to do that before.</p>

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<p>This is an actual essay written by a college applicant, when applying to NYU where he now attends.</p>

<p>3A. ESSAY IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:</p>

<p>ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?</p>

<p>I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. </p>

<p>I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.</p>

<p>Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous
documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.</p>

<p>I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat .400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.</p>

<p>I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.</p>

<p>I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.</p>

<p>But I have not yet gone to college.</p>

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<p>It seems that Hugh Gallagher wrote this for a national writing contest, and that an Urban Legend has since arisen that he wrote it as an actual application essay.</p>

<pre><code>18 June 1998, update. Hugh Gallagher emailed me(!), and said: “I was happy to see my college essay on your site (by the the way, I did send it to colleges)”. So that’s that Urban Legend laid to rest, then? He also said “… and my first novel, Teeth, was published by Pocket Books this Spring. … It’s a coming of age tale about a guy with really messed up teeth, who goes travelling around the world instead of fixing his mouth.” If it’s told with anything like the style and wit of what follows, it should be great!
</code></pre>

<p><a href=“http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm[/url]”>http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/essay.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;