Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Sometimes it's best just to let the shoe drop

I got my first rejection letter of the season just now.

I'm not here to whine about that. It was bound to happen sooner or later, though obviously I'd rather it didn't. What did bother me was the nature of the inevitable "letting them down easy" portion of the letter. After the usual explanation that they can't offer feedback on why my application didn't make the cut (which I of course didn't expect anyhow), they had to go and add, "we suggest you seek the invaluable help of your univristity's career services." How the heck do they know anything about the value of any university's career services? I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with HEC's career office (I'm not offering a vote of confidence either, but I'm definitely not condemning them); it's just that I really hate it when anyone assumes I have such a wealth of resources to draw from when maybe I don't. It touches yet another raw nerve from back in DC, when I was very much left twisting in the wind in a program where one was supposed to have all kinds of support and assistance.

Yes, of course they had to say something, and yes, it's true that nothing they said would be too comforting. It's just that what they did say struck me as an especially poor choice of words.

1 comment:

Patrick said...

That's ok. Liz and I are pretty ticked off with a slogan from the current political election. The incumbent premier has made the increased number of university grads a major selling point to his campaing. This works for the Boomer crowd for those of us under 35 however we take a more market based appraoch...

That many more grad eh... and how many more 'professional' jobs have you created. Not withstanding the shortfall we've just identified lets break this down by category of grads. How many grads in arts, humanities, social sciences or fine arts are actually using their degrees 1) in their field and 2)are not underemployed.

Pretty soon we see that the job 'market' is glutted with grads while we have severe shortages of electricians, construction workers, farmers, plumbers and other such vocations.

Sorry for the rant.. your rejection letter just reminded me of this. People in specfic positions so out of touch with what is happening on the ground.

Cheers,

P