Feet on the ground

When writing anything, many people are quite liable of mistaking big words for brilliant thoughts. I should know, I make the mistake often enough myself in the course of my writing this column. I’ve also become keenly observant of it in other people’s writing.

There is, in another local daily, a woman columnist who is rather extravagant in her use of exclamation points. She litters her writing with it, with great abandon. She is supposedly an educator, so she should know that no amount of punctuation marks could make up for the excitement that is not present in the writing itself.  

Now, if the scholastically superior among us – like this woman columnist – cannot resist the temptation of stuffing their writing with big words and overloading it with all grammatical gears available, what can we expect of the pure greenhorns who, just the same, want to grab attention?

I once worked in a broadcast media outfit. Every year around this time I would come across loads of bad writing from fresh college graduates looking for jobs. After a while in my interaction with those kids, I came to understand that what they really wanted was my job.

Of course, they didn’t actually say it; they were smart kids. Some of them came short of saying that they weren’t really aiming for my job, that they wanted something more. But just to get a start in the business, they’d make do with starting at my level. At the time I was the program supervisor of an FM radio station.

One time I got a letter from a young college graduate. It was written in his own stationery, with his name and address embossed on it. Too grand an impression for someone looking for his very first job, isn’t it? He told me he was a writer in his college newspaper, that he majored in political science and thought Dong Puno was a good TV show host, so he’d like to work on Dong Puno’s show as a writer or producer.

I didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that Dong Puno’s producers didn’t even have their own personal stationery, so as not to discourage him from wanting to work there.

Here’s a short clip from another letter I got: “I love to get involved in the proceedings at a broadcast station because the interchange of ideas occurring within a communications environment have a direct relation to my professional aspirations.” No, the writer was not Robert Frost.

Three years ago a new graduate emailed an application letter to me. She wanted to become a writer, saying that she was always the one asked to write something on their parish church’s bulletin board. Her email to me read, towards the end: “The attached résumé enumerates my relevant credentials and skills, specific experiences and related interests.” I told the young lady to contact The Freeman HR office, instead. And I have since been fervently hoping to see her by-line in this paper’s pages. 

Almost every application letter I see refers to the applicant’s “skills and talents.” Maybe they think that just having skill doesn’t look much, so they make it both plural for added effect.

Stop it, will you, kids? Let me say something; I’d like to help. It’s flattering when you want to be in the same profession I’m in. We’ve probably made the job look good to you. But you’re never going to make it here with talk like that. You mean to sound important, I understand, but you come out pretentious.

I know the desperation of wanting a job so much and not having one. It can drive you crazy when everyone else is working, doing the very thing you like to be doing, and you’re out there feeling all alone. You feel like you’re the only idle person in the whole wide world, and you begin to wonder how much longer you can hold yourself together if it goes on like that.

It is not easy, indeed, for a young person just out of college to be looking for a decent job. Many young people have been brought up under the protective financial wing of loving parents and didn’t have to learn to do any work. But at the moment of graduation there is an unspoken understanding for the new graduate “to start getting on your own now.” 

Parents, of course, aren’t going to throw their beloved kids out of the house right after college graduation. But there is now a pressure for the young graduates to find work. This produces a kind of bewilderment that I’m familiar with, but there’s no reason it should make young people resort to bad writing.

Young job seekers complain that they can’t get a job because they have no experience, and they can’t get any experience without a job. Instead of learning to do a job, they try to learn the magic of words.

One summer break when I was in college, I read an ad in the paper. An upscale restaurant was recruiting young people to form their new dining crew. I came in late. The manager said I just missed the weeklong training that was conducted for the new hires. I promised him I was a fast learner and would easily catch up with the others. He believed me.

On my very first day at work, it took only about an hour for the manager to know for sure I didn’t know the job. I got fired. Two weeks later, I got another job as a waiter in another restaurant. I lasted four days there, but by this time I knew a lot more about a waiter’s job. The third job I got I kept until the end of the summer break because I already had the experience.

That approach to a job works much better, perhaps, than a letter that enumerates one’s “relevant credentials and skills, specific experiences and interests.” Well, at least it worked for me.

I’m not saying you should not have big aspirations. Bluff a little, if need be, to get you on your way. But remember, you won’t have it by all talk. Nobody gets there from here by simply talking the walking. Somehow you have to get your feet bruised, in order to be acquainted with the way.

Keep reaching for the stars. But always keep your feet on the ground. (E-MAIL: [email protected])