Try, Try Again

How can you tell you're still alive when you feel numb from the constant audio/visual stimulation? Because it hurts when you get rejected.

In my case, rejected from a job. Earlier this year, I was turned down for an internship with a local monthly magazine. It stung, but I thought that perhaps I didn't have enough experience, or maybe I didn't take enough care with the writing sample I submitted. At that point I hadn't graduated, and still thought I had more options than an unpaid internship which was enough of a drive to be a concern.

I recently saw an ad for the same magazine's fall internship program, and wondered if I should apply. Would it be strange to send a full cover letter and resume to someone who had read all (or at least most) of it before and had turned me down? Was there even a chance they would want me five months later? I still haven't decided if it's worth it to try.

I also recently applied for a blogging position with a website. I had three subjects in mind, but started with the first one on the list, which happened to be weight loss. I'm currently trying to loss weight, so though I'm no expert, I could offer some solidarity with my posts. It wasn't until I had completed the first application that I learned I could only apply for one subject, then discuss another after I had been accepted. This was troubling, because weight loss was my least confident subject.

Sure enough, a week letter, I received an "unfortunately" e-mail. You know, the e-mails that start out complimentary, but sooner or later the "unfortunately" shows up and you realize the subject of the e-mail should just have been "Fail." I felt deflated. I thought that perhaps I wasn't a writer after all. I had been recommended by someone who wrote for them already, could my application really have been so bad?

Again I faced the quandary: should I accept defeat or try again? There was the possibility that with a stronger subject I might be accepted this time around. This thought was enough to push me to try again. And instead of taking a few days to get back to me, I had an e-mail in seven minutes. This time, there was a happy ending! I had the position of regular blogger on the subject of literature. Hurrah! The pay is competitive, if not consistent, and I'm excited to have an excuse to read more. And, oh, do I have lots to read now!

So what have we learned, class? If at first you don't succeed...

Cover Letters: The Silent Killer (of Humanity)

Having now written innumerable cover letters, I have become a slave to turning my unique thoughts and qualifications and sanitizing them down into the same boring old script. Because God help us if we write something funny or words someone might actually say in real life!

The first few letters I attempted to add a few phrases that I felt described me and perhaps contained just enough wit to make me stand out from the crowd. But after running them past my mother, I was told to leave them out. It would seem that these cover letters are all being read by the most robotic bureaucrats who cannot compute anything beyond the form. This cannot be true. They are just people like you and me, reading e-mails and looking for real people themselves. Surely it would put a smile on their face to read a cover letter which didn't sound as though it could be created by a cleverly written computer program (wait, maybe I should get on making one of those, then I wouldn't need a job).

Why is it only this kind of correspondence which turns us into mindless drones? I say we throw off the shackles of cover letter hypocrisy and tell our potential employees how we really feel! Perhaps a well-placed haiku would more accurately express my desire to write for a particular publication, or a witty equation can prove that technical writing is the gig for me. Join me, my unemployed brethren, join me in the rebellion against insincere 'Sincerely's and desperate 'I look forward to hearing from you's! Together, we can overthrow the boring, the tedious, the soul-stealing rules of cover-letter writing and type once more on the keyboard of candor!

Who's with me?