The Masochist's Institute of Technologyanecdotes of an ambitious MIT student

While having a delightfully reflective conversation with Chao last night, we somehow stumbled on the below topic:

(02:10:59 AM) Chao Xue: do you sometimes feel like we’re going against our nature?
(02:11:09 AM) Chao Xue: trying to be technical and businessy people?
(02:11:20 AM) Chao Xue: while we’re really artists in the heart

My immediate answer was that I “view my emotional side as rather separate from my career”, but the question still significantly troubled me. I fell asleep at 3am still mulling over the topic, and now that I’m rested up from a good night’s sleep, I feel as if I should expand on the idea of “career vs. Career” a bit.

I often joke about the fact that I am a money-monger; I laugh about how I’m going into finance so I can get rich; I dream about the huge house I will eventually own and boast about the towers I will someday own in NYC. One of my most uttered phrases is, “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness was dead wrong.” To any common stranger, I probably seem like a very materialistic person, always thinking about money and the goods it can buy.

However, while it is true that money is an integral part of my motivation – yes, I do dream of waltzing down Fifth Avenue and buying $500 shoes like they’re nothing – I don’t adhere to the belief that money is everything. I just view it as.. a means to an end. Likewise, my planned “career” (investment banking, or something similar in the field of finance) is just a stepping stone to something greater. Not that I don’t hold an interest in finance (on the contrary!), but I definitely can’t see myself working in a corporate setting for my entire life. After a while, I want to be more independent; I want to start my own company, be it a business solutions consulting practice or a software marketing company.

(02:12:39 AM) vivian: I distinguish between my academic/career side, and the more personal side
(02:12:48 AM) vivian: so that when I come home after a hard day’s work, I can sit and reflect
(02:12:59 AM) vivian: it’s a bit harder at MIT since work is never really finished…

Ultimately, I want to start my own entertainment agency, so that I can share my love for music with the world. If I could, I would attempt to be a performer myself, but I cannot sing well enough, cannot compose, cannot arrange music, cannot play music, and cannot dance all too well. So I would probably function best as the director or producer, shaping and molding new artists until they too can find their voice. I view this as my final Career – the job that I would most love to have if money were not an issue.

I’m sure most people have a similar Career in mind, whether it’s being a professional world traveler, or a journalist, or a fashion designer, or an astronaut. You know, the jobs you wanted to be as child, when there were no limits to possibility. A child’s mind is innocent and pure; without taint of the “real world”, without knowledge of money and the power of status. I think the fantasies we dreamt up during that period of our lives is a reflection of our true selves. Wouldn’t it be amazing if, at the end of the day, everyone was able to achieve what they truly wanted to achieve?

I definitely don’t want to disappoint that starry-eyed 5-year-old that grins up at me from my old, yellowed photo albums. She had big dreams of being famous, of being a star, of sharing her thoughts with the world. And even as I sit here, a cynical and pessimistic young woman of nearly 20, I make this promise: I won’t give up on my younger self and her Career goals.

I recently received an email from the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program stating that my resume was unsatisfactory and required a revision. I was directed to an online resume workshop to help me with this, and after going through the videos and slides, I was perplexed. My resume fit all of the specifications perfectly, except for one thing…

My resume is two pages long.

Cue gasps and swoons from the masses. “No way!” you gasp. “Resumes are never, ever longer than one page; you have just committed job-search blasphemy!” My only response is to roll my eyes and stick my finger down my throat to gag in mock horror. Here’s radical statement #1, guys:

Resume can be more than one page long.

It is true that sometime, long ago, someone made up the silly rule that resumes can’t be longer than one page. No matter how small you need to make your font, how many relevant experiences you need to omit, or how narrow you need to make your margins, you must never exceed that one page. It’s a terrible rule for several reasons:

1. Some job seekers genuinely have that many experiences that are necessary to document, and it’s unreasonable to ask people to “water down” their relevant experiences just to fit that one page.
2. It forces people to squish all their text together to the point of being unreadable.
3. It forces people to make their margins extremely small (0.25 inches), so that the entire page looks like a wall of text.
4. Any rule that includes the word “never” is by default unreasonable, as it presents some silly ultimatum that does not take into account the situation at hand.

My resume contains the five traditional headings – objective, education, experience, skills, and awards/honors. All items included under these headings are extremely relevant to any job for which I decide to apply. In total, my resume spans two pages, which I print out on the two opposite sides of one sheet of paper. Naturally, I place the most important information on the first page, and the not-so-important (skills, awards/honors) on the second.

You want to know what else? My resume has not failed me yet; even as a mere sophomore, it has landed me:

• A research job at Harvard Business School
• Web design jobs with two Boston-area startups
• Interviews with Unica Corporation, Microsoft, IBM, and Booz Allen Hamilton

Next time you tell me my resume is unsatisfactory, I will direct you to the above points. Let’s not make this nasty, UPOP office.