Blog #6: RWS 305 Confessions

Most instructors seem to be experts in everything. I am not. I assume people can tell I'm not. And so I feel compelled to confess all my shortcomings. Well, maybe not all of them.

To contextualize my gaps in knowledge, I made sure to introduce you to Amy DeVitt (the genre article), who boldly asserted that teachers cannot be experts in all genres.

And then I assigned Gee, who talked about having to mushfake any time you encounter a new Discourse or genre. Basically, watch and learn, and then fake it until you make it. 

And so the way I see it, I seem much more credible when I acknowledge things I don't  know. Maybe I am delusional. 

And so here is a new confession: I have never made a traditional resume for myself.

I have worked in a variety of jobs, but I have never needed to create a resume. People just met me and offered me work. My first job was as a paper carrier, and then I worked at a Jack-in-the-Box, a Lerner's store, and a bookstore that is now out of business.

After that, I became a reading tutor, a bank teller, a French teacher, a gymnastics teacher, a dance fabric order filler, a medical transcriptionist, and an executive assistant for a small non-profit. And not one of these employers ever asked for a resume.

I'm so glad. I had no idea how to make one.

I did have to make a curriculum vitae when I started applying for teaching jobs at the university level, but that's a little different.

And so I never wanted to teach anyone how to create resumes. Even though almost all the other RWS 305 teachers included this segment.

Seriously. I worried that I would screw up my students' lives forever.

And then my daughter tried to make one for an internship, and I saw how she struggled to present herself, and I realized that if I wanted to have a well-rounded curriculum, I needed to include this. For my students' sake.

I set out to learn by studying other resumes. Looking at articles online. Stealing ideas from other instructors. And reading books.

I realized that all those strategies, the strategies I teach for other genres, work for this genre too.

Wow. That's a lot of confession.

So. What can YOU write about?

Well, you can write about a time when you had to learn something you didn't want to learn and how you learned it. Or you can write about applying for a job. Or needing to fake your way into expertise. Or your own adventures in resume making.

Or you can write about the challenges in embracing the values and ideologies of resume making. Or the ethos, pathos, logos of resume making. Or any combination of these things.