This is a brilliant cover letter, one I hope will find its way to many a Human Resources desk.

A resume without a college degree is never going to get past the computer programs that screen applications. Why? Certainly it’s not because most corporate employers possess a deep affinity for the life of the mind. In fact in his book Executive Blues, G. J. Meyers warned of the “academic stench” that can sink a career: That master’s degree in English? Better not mention it.

My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one’s ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white-collar job, most of the time you’ll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end–whether in library carrels or office cubicles–does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned–although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-”team-player.” You will do anything. You will grovel.

footnote

it’s also culturally revealing… how quickly oppression and bullying and toadying in the workplace are connected in our minds to prostitution — how reflexive that connection is, that we *know* prostitution is coercive and humiliating on a level so deep that when we try to talk about being coerced and humiliated by employers, having to “suck up” (ahem) for a job, the first metaphors that float into consciousness are… sexual…

I want you to know that I am exceedingly passionate (to the point of sexual arousal) about the opportunity to work for you

faking sexual arousal and interest: a primary task of prostitutes (often punished for not pretending to enjoy being raped and insulted) and often of wives and girlfriends involved with domineering male partners…

I will perform services for you that I wouldn’t perform for even my most intimate lover

again, prostitution is about performing services for clients that — in many cases — no caring person would demand from a lover and no self-respecting person would offer unless heavily coerced. (the extent to which female self-respect is undermined from girlhood on has been discussed here and in many other fora, books. etc).

I find it interesting and telling that we, as a culture, find it hard to talk about domination without sexual themes and metaphors creeping in, and hard to talk about sex without domination creeping (or barging) in…

The original at “Prole Notes” contains some links that might help explain what drove me to write this (besides the fact that I have been, of necessity, writing a few “real versions” of these things lately.)

The word “passionate” in the second sentence links to:

http://alternet.org/workplace/47768/

(Thanks to De for that one.)

The words “what The System is designed to produce” link to:

http://www.educationrevolution.org/dumbingusdown.html