Many high schools offer an Internship class to students during their senior year. Students spend two, sometimes more, hours each day with lawyers, accountants, teachers, physical therapists, veterinarians, decorators or another professional in a career in which they are interested.  If a student determines the career choice is one that doesn’t interest him, then he’s (his parents?) saved a great deal of money in college. If it does prove to be of interest, then the student generally pursues the curriculum with greater passion.

Years ago, I taught an Internship class and, in preparing to do so, had to spend hours during the summer shadowing some of the places/people where our interns would be assigned.  One of the employers shared information that I continue to repeat to my students every year even though I no longer teach the internship class.

He told me that he will not hire anyone who does not correctly spell a word that is already on the job application. “If a person can’t pay attention to detail on the job application, how can I expect attention to detail on the job itself?”

Last night, I tripped across this site, 150 Funniest Resume Mistakes.  Are they funny? Yes, depending on which side of the resume you happen to be on. What’s not so funny is that some of the mistakes were due to any one of the number of errors I ask my students to pay attention to every year.

So, here’s evidence that there’s something worse than not passing English…it’s not getting hired.

(I’ve included a few here. You can click on the link for the rest.)

From Resume Hell:

1. “Career break in 1999 to renovate my horse”
2. “1990 – 1997: Stewardess – Royal Air Force”
3. Hobbies: “enjoy cooking Chinese and Italians”
4. “Service for old man to check they are still alive or not.”

From Ask Annie’s article about resume blunders:

Posted with permission. Visit Debbie at www.inkygirl.com

(from Christa: Woman in bathing suit NOT drawn to my scale…unfortunately.)

I hope you consider joining because, as both an author and reader, I appreciate the passionate efforts of The Bookclub Network in connecting us to one another.

And, if you work for or manage a bookstore, this would be a great venue for you as well.

Not literally, of course, like being protected by a bulletproof vest of hardbacks and Anna Karenina-sized paperbacks. But they’ve been, figuratively, life preservers when I’m drowning in a sea of chaos, frustration, anger, grief or all of the above.

What they’ve provided for me is a haven; a place to retreat when all the other doors are slamming. Writing isn’t always an art I can fully share. It’s not like a painting propped on an easel or a tune coaxed from the strings of a violin. But to be able to pull a thought through my brain like so many scarves out of a magician’s sleeve and watch my hand glide across the barren whiteness of paper and create something from nothing is amazing.

Certainly, not all I write is amazing. Often it’s a mess of emotional brain urp. But the process fascinates me. In the same way that I’m still fascinated waves travel through the air, find their way to my car, and convert themselves into music that comes back out of my speakers as waves again. I mean, how WOW is that? Invisible stuff. Floating through people and places and things and producing stuff.

So, too, writing is that act of creation. A garden of safety…before the Fall.

What do books and/or writing mean to you?