I'm sorry and I take it all back.

I'm sorry, Entry-Level Candidate.

I didn't mean what I said and I want you back.

I want you back with your misspellings and your atrocious grammar and your questionable judgment.

Because those things, aggravating though they may be, do not make me want to get a fifty-pound bag of rice and run off alone into the Alaskan wilderness as does one day of reading professional-level resumes.

The acronyms. The dizzyingly complex job descriptions that do not seem to have any relation to real-world activity. The corporate-speak. The buzzwords. The sense that you are in "The Emperor's New Clothes" and what you have in front of you is not a page listing someone's professional history but rather a joke to see if you get that they are ACTUALLY SAYING NOTHING AT ALL.

The flashbacks to days-long meetings in stuffy conference rooms, watching someone READ VERBATIM EACH BULLET POINT off the projected PowerPoint presentation, talking about "implementing process improvements" and "change management" and in general taking three minutes to say what could have been said in one sentence, and, by extension, the "team" taking three days to make one simple decision. Which, because it was by committee, was generally the wrong one.

I think I prefer despairing over the educational system over despairing over the corporate system. Because the educational system is at least something I can vote on, I feel like I have a pretense of control.

But this other stuff...oh, Entry-Level Candidate, I didn't know how good I had it.