Get Off the Ice, Cam Ward!!

It's Called a Style Guide

There's big doings at the university just now: we're in dire need of a new Vice Chancellor for Research. Guess who got put on the committee?

The applications are almost uniformly terrible. My understanding is that I can talk as much shit as I want about them as long as I don't use names, so here goes:

What is it about a CV and cover letter that makes academics go stupid? It's called a style guide, y'all, and you should get one and look at the template for the CV/cover letter application. No shit, some people actually put photos of themselves on the first page. Photos! Of themselves! Like Glamor Shots!

Vice. Chancellor. For. Research.

It's not the Potentate of the Universe, sure; but this office oversees all research, compliance, funding, intellectual property, training, and lobbying related to research across both campuses, including the medical school. This is not a time for head shots.

Nor is it a time to skimp on the details and presentation. Too many of these cover letters are one paragraph of general sentiments about being interested in something something, followed by a list of bullet-points that aren't so much relevant qualifications but rather every activity in which the applicant ever partook.

"I take time to grasp issues, people, and their sensitivities and, yet, have been rapid in implementing..." This has to be one of my favorite sentences, ever. You take time to "grasp people"? We don't want that! That would be very bad for us, in fact! I got your people for graspin'...right here!

How about the person who ended the cover letter with "I look forward to this opportunity with the University of Massachusetts at Boston." D'oh!!

CVs. CVs, people. It's not a fucking laundry list -- it's a customized and customizable snapshot of what you've done that fits the description sent out by the people you want to hire you. I don't fucking care that you write plays in your spare time, or that you once gave a lecture at Rangpur University on women in science in the States, or even that you are single. Yes, some people's CVs actually have a place for marital status, despite the fact that it is completely fucking illegal for us to consider that in hiring! One person put a social security number on the CV. Another wrote down hobbies, like hiking and rock climbing.

Vice. Chancellor. For. ...oh, fuck it.

And what is it about scientists that makes it OK for them to publish the same paper 8 times and call it 8 different publications? Set aside for a moment that nobody in the sciences works alone (I count an average of 4 co-authors on each paper), but why do they think that a list of 100, 200, or 300 "publications" will be any more impressive than an historians' list of 10? The act of publishing has been rendered meaningless by this idiocy. No one, I am now certain, reads any of these articles, because clearly the whole point is just to crank out 25 a year so you can have a 49-page CV, one page for every year of your life.

Finally, why are a significant number of these applicants obsessed with the Department of Defense -- to the point they think mentioning that their first priority, as VCR, would be to enhance the university's ties to DoD? Um...why the fuck would we want that? This isn't a shell company or some front for your bullshit DARPA computer project, or your ion warfare lab, or your protocol to train dogs to hold bees in their mouths.

Not a single representative of the humanities applied for this job. I miss those flakes.

How Fortuna-te

And all these years, Bob, I never knew you were a high school sportswriter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer!

And Again...

It occurs to me that Rick Warren may fill a Sanjay Gupta-like hole (gross!), in that he is not the most progressive fellow out there (except in his waistline, which has progressed nicely, from "big" to "all-encompassing like the love of our Lord"). But, President Obama essentially paraded Warren around on inauguration day like a totem of his, Obama's, tolerance for dickwads. I suspect that when Obama makes gay marriages legal, Rick Warren will have no choice but to get in line. Does that make any sense?