It’s job hunting season again, though I feel as if it never
really ended. Sort of like two weeks into the new school year and you realize
the summer break wasn’t nearly long enough.
It means scouring the web for opportunities and lots of
writing. I’d like to say I can write cover letters in my sleep by now but
somehow it never gets any easier. I’m trying to be more precise and less
long-winded but it remains a challenge. I get excited about my past
accomplishments and tend to go on and on. At little research ended up in this find, a format that I really love as it forces me to be concise. I’m not sure
what employers think however, and I have found it occasionally results in a 2
page letter.
In addition, my blog posts are piling up in my head. None of
this would be too much of a problem as I love writing and it seems to be the
only art form I have managed to hold onto here in Abidjan. Except my computer
is slowly losing its keys. Writing is already arduous process. My fascination with
words means I am constantly searching and revising for the perfect synonym,
phrase or analogy. Now I have to stop every few sentences or so to fill in
missing letters. I’ve tried just writing the entire piece and then going back to
complete the gaps but my natural rhythm defeats that. Usually I have the l on
copy and spell check picks up most words. There are plenty of times however when
“no suggestions” pops up, or none of the suggestions are the ones I am
searching for. I’ve found little tricks to help out with this. Writing unior in order to get the suggestion of
junior and then deleting everything but the sought after j. Some words don’t
register as wrong and those are the ones I need to be especially careful
about. Apparently u is a word…so writing
up requires prudent editing. The word
like easily becomes lie without the k and so again, diligent
proofing essential.
Being the word nerd that I am, I actually find this whole
process somewhat fascinating, except that it takes 4 times as long to write
something, and I am in constant danger of losing my train of thought as I search for the missing alphabet. That’s not even including the
search for the dash and the closed parenthesis, previously two of my favorite punctuations
as I can’t help but insert unrelated commentary and thoughts about my thoughts.
In order to find that, I usually do a Google search for parenthesis and copy
and paste. Along with the zero, in the case of needed numbers.
Capital letters threw me off for awhile but I have [had?]
found a shortcut for that. “Transformations” used to pop up as an option and it
allowed me to make a word or letter completely capital or lower case. I can’t seem to find that again in this
writing.
It occurred to me during one long evening laboring over
letters that if potential employers knew the lengths I went to make a
presentable document, they would surely offer me the job right away. My
critical thinking and problem solving skills definitely put to the test.
