09.09 - Resume and College Essay Writing

We started off today looking at the differences that may exist between a high school resume and a professional resume that someone may have after several years of work. So far, all of the resumes that we have looked at are resumes of people with established work histories. For this activity, we looked at my resume from just after high school and my resume when I was applying to graduate school.

After high school resume
Applying to grad school resume

Everyone was then asked to respond to the following question in their writer's journals:

What differences do you notice between these resumes with respect to their content (the set up is about the same, but feel free to make some observations if you see a noteworthy difference).

The observations the class made and some notes that came out of our discussion are available below.

Annotations on the after-high-school resume:

(click image to enlarge)

Green Text - Class Observations

Blue Text - One of our students has been helping in the interview process for a new English teacher in the department and these were what he found himself looking for when reviewing the applicants' resumes.

Red Text - My notes.
I pointed out how even at this stage, I was looking to describe jobs in terms of their responsibilities and wider purpose (e.g. "Lawn and Yard Maintenance" instead of "mowing lawns and weeding.").
The other note was to indicate that I could have improved some of the descriptions to tell more about what I was doing (e.g. "Facilitated art projects for up to a dozen children ages 3 - 10" is more descriptive than simply, "Facilitated art projects.")

This discussion was designed to give information about resumes to both juniors and seniors since everyone will need to do a resume at some point in their life. We will be looking at college essays tomorrow.

The class then went to work on their college essays or resumes.

People who knew which post-secondary institution they wanted to apply to looked up the admissions requirements to see if there was a specific essay. People who did not know the schools to which they would like to apply used the Common Application prompts. Some people's choice schools just use the Common Application as well.

Common Application prompts are available here.

Resume worksheets are available on pages 3 - 6 of the  Hamilton Resume Guide.


Homework:

Have a rough draft of your college essay or resume available for Wednesday.