Cover letters, I hate them. Some weird amalgam of college application essays and those weird formal letters you learned how to write in your sixth grade computer class, cover letters are little packets of desperation and salesmanship wrapped in a reiteration of key terms. And the advice that is given on the proper writing of cover letters is just, well, crap. Use your own voice! But use their language! Be detailed! But cover everything they mention in the job description! Tailor for each application! In three paragraphs! (My major critique is that I tend to be too formal. But I’m a proper kind of girl- I send thank you letters and don’t start eating until everyone at the table gets their food – informal cover letters just horrify that tiny bit of me that one summer read every manners book the local library had).
I was mired in the middle of an All New ™ cover letter and anxious over opening and concluding sentences so I decided to go for a run to clear my head. Halfway into the second mile I started to compose this blog entry instead. Really, it’s not a surprise. Cover letters and more “formal” blog entries are very similar. They’re both fairly short pieces designed to be both sell your ideas and knowledge while remaining very readable. An impressive tidbit; an amuse-bouché for the mind as it were.
And in and after a summer of cover letters, of trying to find a new way to say that I was smart and a team player who really could do research, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised I stopped blogging, finding other projects instead to take my time. I was burned out in trying to differentiate my one little bag of thoughts and skills from everyone else’s and then pushing them out into the big bad world. Both the job market and the blogging/thoughts on social media/etc field are stuffed full of people. Full of good people, bad people, connected, un-connected, cocksure and lost people.
I certainly didn’t know how I fit in and then, then I went for a run. When I wrote my master’s thesis, I worked on it in three places: in a carrel at the UofC library with piles of books and notecards, on my living room floor with CSI playing in the background, and on the Lakeshore running trail, feet pounding frustration. The carrel made me feel smart and productive, the floor was mainly organizational and editing, and the trail? The trail was for letting all the pieces slide around until they started to work. Until I started to work. If this were an after school special, this is the point where the inspiring montage would happen. Me training for some race, running up the corporate ladder. Neither of those is me, but I’m going to try to go clear my head a little more often, write a little more here and a little less there.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a cover letter to finish.