With the New Year and my recent graduation from college, I was left wondering where to place my next step.  To tell the truth, the whole thing kind of snuck up on me.  I had graduated a semester early and hadn’t really done anything in terms of gaining experience that would lead me to my dream job.  After winter vacation, I returned to my apartment in Tallahassee from my hometown, Orlando, and frantically began searching for employment opportunities that would replace my biannual financial aid.

            At the suggestion of my parents, I went online and began searching the two main employment websites, Careerbuilder.com and Monster.com.

            The first step was to post the most recent draft of my resume.  Careerbuilder has a button which will allow you to upload your own document, rather than tediously entering the information yourself.  I clicked here and was ordered to give my resume title.  (Careerbuilder suggests to “use your desired Job Title or highlight your key experience and qualifications.”)  I decided to go with “Experienced Editor/Writer”— in retrospect, a particularly dull title; but throughout the course of my job-hunting, I realized my lack of experience in the field of editing and limited myself to “Data Entry Receptionist with International Experience.”  Next, I uploaded my resume, a MS Word file.  Then, they asked me to select three job categories and provide my relative work experience, whether or not I had managed others (and how many), and my languages spoken.  I also had to fix my work experience.  It appeared they had extracted my past company information from my file, and poorly.  After clicking “no” on their offers for information on Naval Reserve opportunities and degrees from an online university, I clicked “continue.”  Then, I finally got to see my resume.  It was butchered.  They had reformatted my resume into plain-text very poorly, but I was given the opportunity to edit it myself.  This was a pain in the ass.  I had already taken the time to create my resume and make it look pretty; now I had to settle for boring, text-only format.  Finally, I requested to only be contacted by email (I thought it was the lesser of the other two evils: phone and address), unchecked all the email-newsletter boxes, skipped their “special offer” from another online university, and clicked “post resume.”  And it was done.  Careerbuilder’s resume-posting regiment took about 30 minutes.

            Monster was much easier.  Again, I had to make up a resume title (I again went with Experienced Editor/Writer), choose public or private resume status (public, of course), work experience, and target job information.  I uploaded the file and clicked “save resume.”  I had to click through a pre-page ad offering information from an online university, which was a tedium I would later find to be a staple in Monster.  Then, I was done.  Easy.  And my resume was presented in the beautiful format I created in MS Word!  No lame text!

            Next I searched both websites’ job listings.  Both presented the listings in pretty much the same format.  On both, I selected my location and clicked search.  I had the opportunity to narrow the search to fields and interests, but after the hour it took to post my resume, I just wanted to see some jobs.  When I clicked on a nice-sounding job, both sites either sent me directly to the company’s hiring website, or the job-information page hosted by Monster or Careerbuilder.  Monster, although, continued to present me with pre-page ads that were continually annoying.

            Between these two employment websites, Monster came out on top simply because my resume retained its original MS Word formatting.  My tedious experience with reformatting Careerbuilder’s text-only resume left me screaming “Damn you, Careerbuilder.”  Monster’s only annoyances are the superfluous pre-page ads that can be passed with a simple click of the “no, thank you” button.  But the end result is where the true function of these websites stand out:  the job hire.  And I’m still waiting on my dream job.

Yasmina Khadra

Nan A. Talese
Hardcover
208 pages
January 2007

 

The early pages of Yasmina Khadra’s 2002 book, The Swallows of Kabul, bleed with violence.  Set after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the novel centers on two couples confined within the Taliban’s religious fervor; but Khadra’s superfluous style is almost as constricting as the regime’s control.

The first chapter gives us Atiq Shaukat, a man fighting his way through the dingy streets of Kabul with his whip and disgust.  Atiq is having trouble finding comfort, and his vocation as a jailer who guards prisoners before their executions makes life seem like an inescapable torment.  This feeling doesn’t leave him when he comes home to his weak terminally ill wife.  Atiq’s conscience borders on despair and rage.

The other characters, Mohsen and Zunaira Ramat, are also fighting the misery of Taliban rule.  Forced into the patriarchy, Zunaira remains inside all day, unable to don the burqa that will shroud her identity.  When Mohsen reveals to her that he participated in the stoning of a prostitute after being caught up in the crowd’s whirlwind of hatred, something irreparable tears in their loving relationship.

This novel is well-written Khadra creates a story in which the characters’ lives weave throughout a world of ignorance and danger.  Told in the present tense, his story is enrapturing, his characters dynamic.  The Ramats’ affluent past combined with their indiscernible future is heart-wrenching.  Yet, it is Khadra’s style and diction that makes this novel sometimes unbearable to read.

Khadra seems intent on spelling everything out for his reader.  He creates images that are meaningful and symbolic, but he follows it up with a direct connection to its meaning.  Nothing is left up to the reader.  In an early example, a few young boys are violently harassing a stray dog.  Clearly depicted in their intent to kill, this image creates a connection with the novel’s earlier execution.  Khadra needlessly connects it for us with the line, “The little scoundrels won’t disperse before lynching the animal, thus precociously preparing themselves to lynch men.”

Khadra’s novel becomes overtly didactic.  A story that was intended to elucidate the horrors of the Taliban’s regime becomes tied up in its own desire to make a point.  Khadra’s dialogue, as a result, is excessive and unrealistic, and I have trouble believing anything that the characters say.

The story is enthralling, however.  Khadra manages to create an oppressively realistic and grungy setting, and he develops characters that are just interesting enough for you to forget their pedantic purpose and actually care about them.

The Swallows of Kabul is rich—sometimes too rich to read in more-than-one-chapter sittings.  But it is still well written.  In any means, Kabul will devour you.

Things have been taking up a lot of my time lately.  I'm graduating soon and the prospect of graduate school looms in the distance.  There's been a dip in the first round of excitement that usually accompanies the first few weeks of school.  Now I think I can write.

It's funny, trying to spit something out onto your keyboard without any direction in mind, like driving with no destination.  It's meditative--my mind starts settling on questions like "why are we here?" and all that business, then I go back and re-read what I've actually said and notice there's really no substance.  Perhaps writing without direction is like driving without a destination--wasteful.

The aforementioned prospect of grad school has left my mind swirling with thoughts of my future and, considering this trite that I am writing into a little white box and will eventually post on the black expanse of the internet, I may be being naively optimistic when I think it's bright. 

I think about graduating with a degree in English.  How conceited is that?  I'm studying the intricacies of my native language in a college that's really only known for its football.  I talk to foreigners and I ask them what they studying and they tell me "English."  Instead of saying "Wow! Me too.  Don't you just love Mark Twain?" I tell them that I'm an engineering or a biology major.  Don't judge me.  Haven't all Americans lied to foreigners at one moment in time?

But I have been proud of some of the stuff that I've written; some is posted here, some is not.  My problem is that it is limited.  If I really want to write for a living, I need at least 12 pieces circulating for publication at one time.  But that takes time...

_A

   I just bought a box full of meat! It was amazing. This guy came to the door and asked me if I liked steak. I was like, Hell yeah I do! So he was like, Come with me to my truck. I followed him to his pickup truck and it had a giant freezer in it. He dips his face in this white monster of a freezer and pulls out this box of steak that was about the size of a case of beer -- any cut you can think of, he had it. He said he was trying to get rid of it, so if I bought one box, he'd throw in another for free AND he'd pack my freezer (I declined this, I did not want the meat man in my house). He also had pork and chicken. Fuck chicken! I said. He said it has a year guarantee (although I don't know if you can guarantee meat. What if I cook it wrong? I have his phone number: "Hey, Meat Guy! I burnt my fucking steak, send more!").

 

So now I have a idiot-sized quantity of meat (pork and steak) and I can't fit it all in the freezer. The Meat Angel has left and my meat is melting.

Now English is the national language of the U.S.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.