The Humorist

Following is an email I received from a Professor of Texas A&M University in response to my request for an RAship and financial support:

Hello Jack of all Jacks:

Thanks for your interest in Industrial Distribution. I read your resume
and found it most interesting that you have written short stories
in English. The protocol that I follow in awarding assistants to
graduate students is to first have an oral face-face interview.
Presently, the assistantships that I have are filled, but a vacancy may
occur in the near future. When you arrive in College Station, please
contact me and we can arrange for an oral interview.

Regards,

(Signed)

The fellow is a humorist, plain and simple! I knew it the moment I read his mail. My views have radically changed since I chanced to read the mail. First, I have come to believe from his mail that the mere fact that I indite short stories in English interests Professors more than my academic record, creditable though it may be! More importantly, it is the fact that I, despite being an Indian student, write short stories in English; not in Zulu or Pali. How thrilling it is for me to realise my infinite capabilities in a language completely alien to me!

The mind-boggling retrospection has had serious affectations on my impression of myself. I have thought over it for a whole night and have decided to take the issue by the scruff of the neck. My Resume, from today, shall begin thus:

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
A Senior year Engineering Student who is an accomplished author of Short-
Stories in English (and not any tribal language like Zulu). Incidentally,
possessing a creditable academic record and hobbying in Manufacturing
Systems and CAD/CAM systems.

The remaining part of my resume will be a simple couple of lines!

ACADEMIC HONOURS/ ACHIEVEMENTS & RESEARCH WORK/PROJECTS
For more information on the genre, style and calibre of my writing, please
see: http://panvista.blogspot.com

EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
1. B.E (Hons.) Mechanical at BITS, Pilani

Ah! What a wondrous feeling to be able to complete my Resume in a couple of lines! If only anyone had so much hinted the suggestion that this was possible, my friend Dexter would have commanded him to turn away and kicked him on the backside with his left boot. Resumes are supposed to be those things which everyone gets down to draft with the impression that he has few accomplishments worthy of mention, but ends up drafting out a dozen of sheets. By the time he has finished drafting his resume, he has grown so much in stature that he is a pioneer in his field. He had all along been asinine enough not to realise his strengths! Now he has so much to say about himself that it is virtually impossible to shrink his resume to 3 pages! And he wonders, probably these Professors do not want to feel challenged by the academic potential of the students. How can anybody ever complete his resume in 3 pages? Unless he has floundered his entire college life by straying on the streets like a vagabond. And he scratches his chin with his pen and his eyes wander on to the 'COMPUTER SKILLS' column:

COMPUTER SKILLS
1. MS-DOS
2. Windows 95
3. Windows 98
4. Windows NT
5. Windows XP
6. MS Word
7. MS Excel
8. Logo
9. BASIC

It sets alight a raging debate in his mind: is it absolutely essential for him to put MS-Word? After all, the Professor will have enough sense to figure out that the resume was typed out in Word. Oh! But there may be people who will have given it to a typist to get it typed! Obviously, Professors will be shrewd enough to take cognisance of his expertise in MS-Word in the light of these cases. And, he must look to edge out these people... And so MS-WORD stays to fight another day. And after a thorough appraisal and scores of similar such raging self-conflicts, he manages to reduce his resume from a staggering 13 pages to an impressive five-and-a-half pages. At the end of the Herculean effort, he is transformed into the extremely motivated individual that had set foot in this world to revolutionise modern research... Of course, it was sacrilege to even dream of completing your resume within three sides of paper, leave alone a solitary leaf; it meant that you had little to write about and was a sure reject candidate. But today, I have realised it is possible courtesy a Godly Professor. I humbly bow my head in obeisance to the great soul that has bestowed on me this divine afflatus.

But somehow, I still get the feeling that the gentleman is not entirely convinced. Though he seems to be taken in by my writing capabilities, he still seems to doubt my speaking abilities; he wants an oral tete-a-tete! Here, I cannot blame him. For the number of people who say Loory for Lorry and Noo-ledge for Knowledge must have appalled him. I should make it a point to include in my Resume the fact that I can also speak English and say precisely Lorry as Lorry and Sorry as Sorry!

But, all said and done, he belongs to a breed that everyone craves to belong to at some point or the other. He is a humorist, plain and simple!

- posted by Dileepan @ 1:58:00 am

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