People love to talk about Themselves!

We're inherently narcissists, let's face it. Even if they had opposable thumbs i doubt the dinosaurs would have came up with such worthwhile activities as Blogging and Facebook, given a few more millenia to hone their technological capabilities. If their time was survival of the fittest ours would sadly be survival of the ...................... Put your answers on the bottom to that one, i have my view but i think it will be an interesting experiment to see what you would all come up with.

Consequently I always recommend if you are ever interviewed by anyone, ask them questions that get them talking about the things they enjoy or were successful in, because bottom line, people like talking about themselves. I have helped a lot of people write personal statements recently, for Med school, Law school, various Grad school and Scholarship programs. And for some reason they all commonly say "i find it hard to write about myself" This prompted me to ruminate on this one a little. Why is it that we freely love talking about ourselves (some more than others) but have such difficulty in writing it down, as if somehow writing it down is confirmation of our arrogance and machiavellian ways. For all of the folks that will undoubtedly challenge this, yes there are exceptions to the rule, we know this, so shut up, no one wants to hear from you.

I challenge anyone to deny they have ever made the claim that they "possess excellent communication skills," except for the girl who fainted in my English class one time because she freaked about giving a presentation and the guy who my friend knows who puked on stage at a pretty big presentation. If he nailed it from there, that guy is a legend. Anyway i digress, the point is that we all at some point have to be good at this, whether it is a resume, interview, presentation or personal statement, we have undoubtedly been called upon to discuss and prove our inner workings and abilities. But what exactly are "excellent communication skills, both written and oral." There are sure to be countless wikioogle definitions more scientific than mine, but i'll say it is to get across one's point and for it to have the desired effect. You can't of course arrive at the second part of that statement without being good at the first part, nevertheless I find it better to always focus on the end result because if it is worth it, you'll find a way to get your point across.

Let's look at the oral part. There is a difference between confidence and arrogance, cross it at your peril. Nothing worse than a know it all, or someone who has a story or joke to beat every story or who demands to be the center of attention at every gathering, grrrr this one is irritating and i would like to punch these people in the guts. This is the person who answers the biggest weakness question with the "well i don't know, i've never really thought about that" or heaven forbid "honestly i've tried but i just cannot think of one, you pick one" Please however do not take this to mean that you cannot talk about yourself. Successes need to be celebrated, good stories need to be told and qualities and abilities always need to be highlighted, a little bit of humility here and there, maybe allow other people to have their voice be heard and get their moment in the sun. Thankfully most people can grasp this and can effectively present themselves, i'm sure i'll talk about interviews specifically later in a more detailed post, but i think surprisingly the the oral part is less difficult to teach, unless of course you are prone to fainting or vomiting at the thought of it.

I would have thought that in this age of autobiographies, (don't you love those ones written by famous 25 years olds that are updated every year) that it would be a little easier, but perhaps therein lies the problem. Maybe we feel that you have to earn the right to write about yourself, that you have to do monumental things to warrant writing about them. I have rarely enjoyed autobiographies written for commercial gain, i even studied this course at college and have always viewed them with mistrust but also from a literary perspective i have found them not enjoyable and not well written. Maybe i have not found the right one but they don't often deal with the regular everyday events that happen, but to me the most meaningful occurrences are those that we all endure and suffer, not how some overpaid actor gets off their face on drugs. And so i enjoy the process of working with people on their personal statements, getting them to relate the stories and ocurrences of their life that were really profound, but that they had always marginalized and viewed as not important. When each of us really looks at what we have done there is usually some pretty interesting stuff to talk about, maybe it's not headline material for tabloids but it's worth sharing, especially when people want to find out who we are in a 1000 word document. It is supposed to be personal, not a list of achievements or highlights, but a presentation of how we were able to do the things we've done, the challenges we faced and the things we have taken meaning in. I love working on those things with people and hearing their stories, some sad, some uplifting, some downright ridiculous but typically unique. And often what was a daunting assigned task becomes something that people actually enjoy doing.

On an absolute side rant, what is it with Facebook status updates. I kept quiet about Twitter, it's supposed to be short and quirky and filled with little irrelevances and throwaway comments, but FB was surely not designed for the drivel that gets put up on it. It's not a place to constantly bang the drum about political frustrations, and can you believe the amount of personal and emotional info people throw into their status updates, i don't know most of my "FB friends" well enough to be comfortable about reading some of their info that has no context or purpose behind it except to say pity me. Anyway, i've had a bit of a ramble there, but as Tiger Woods might say, we all stray. Oh and what about the quote of the year from Jesper Parnevik for telling it like it is, the only advice i have for Mrs Woods is that next time "use the driver not the 3 iron" Classic!