Word: posterers
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...yesterday at the front door to Eliot House, something entirely new had burst onto the campus poster scene. Disguising itself as an ordinary poster, the blinding orange flier nearly blended in with all of the "Take Back the Night" posters until its bold, screaming words came into full view: "RESUME CONTEST...
...terms alone are shocking in their normalcy. Resume. Contest. Both are words that you'd expect to see on a poster, maybe even on the same poster, as in "To enter the Third Annual Edible Pre-Frosh Contest, send your resume to University Hall." Or "Prepare to witness a blood-chilling contest as the Women's Ping-Pong Team and their Princeton rivals resume their bloody battle of balls." But a resume contest...
Without even resorting to crude sexual innuendo, the poster earns itself a closer look. And once more, the poster delivers. "Are you a senior looking for a JOB?" it screams. "Are you a sophomore or a junior looking for a SUMMER INTERNSHIP?" (Notice that these categories apply to an overwhelming majority of students.) "Then enter the 1st annual Harvard Resume Contest! Contest judges are looking for well-rounded resumes. Your G.P.A. is not required...
...vacation in Washington, D.C.? "Three winners," the flier promises, "one from each year, will receive a $50.00 prize!" Here our hearts sink. After all, it was merely months ago that certain companies, running their own private resume contests, were offering a $50,000 prize. (The superfluous zeroes on the poster are part of the tease.) And then we get to the fine print: "As part of a larger research project on career choices by organizational researchers, a resume contest will be held from April 23 to April 28." (Yes, that means you can't play anymore...
Alas--or, might we say, "Jamnation!"--the Resume Contest offers about as much wish-fulfillment as the Kendo Club offers lewd entertainment. The poster directs interested students to a Web site, where the whole thing turns out to be a disappointingly harmless psychological test. Yet there remains something eerie about it, perhaps even more so after it becomes clear that the whole thing comes no closer to fulfilling our fantasies than the promises of free hot phone sex. Psychological researchers presumably designed this poster in order to capture our attention, and the method they devised...