Résumé can’t reflect experience of life’s lessons
COMMENTARY
Julie Ann Matonis

I’m getting sick of being asked this question even if it’s by well-meaning friends and family. You get looks of sympathy and encouraging sentiments that you really don’t care to hear.

“Do you have a job yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Well, you’ll figure something out.”

No kidding. Have I somehow given the impression that I want to live with my parents forever? I know I’ll find something, but I don’t want to be rushed into a job that won’t make me happy. Is that so wrong?

Once this question became everyone’s favorite topic of conversation I knew something I’d been dreading was about to happen. Soon my time here at TCU is going to be reflected to most people simply as a resume and a diploma.

Interviewers won’t appreciate the random things I’ve learned during the past four years.

Some of these lessons have been vital to my personality. Yet there’s no section on your resume that leaves room to say, “The friends I found at TCU became my family and without them, I wouldn’t have survived.”

Under work experience, I do have information about my internship in Washington D.C.

But it didn’t seem appropriate to include how my friends at TCU called me up from football games so I could hear them singing the alma mater or how they gave me a speakerphone play-by-play of the Secret Santa gift exchange I missed.

I list my home address in San Antonio at the top of my resume, but that leaves out a few key details. Like how my friends knew what a fanatical San Antonio Spurs fan I am, so they got tickets for a game during one Spring Break. Or how last year (and this weekend) we traveled home for Fiesta, to enjoy the parades and NIOSA. Or how Kyle, Robert and Rebecca are also from San Antonio and we’d just never met before.

I list my job from Fort Worth City Cable last summer, but the summer was much more than that reporting job. It was my first real apartment off-campus with Mary Kathleen. It was Mark sleeping on the couch because I didn’t want to be alone when Mary Kathleen was gone. It was going to No Frills Grill in Arlington with Mark, Kyle, Robert and Peter and being made fun of by the waiter as I drank Midori Sours.

My resume does include details about my time served at the Skiff. I can’t even begin to approximate the number of hours I spent sitting at a computer staring at the gray walls as I waited for inspiration to strike. And the job titles don’t give the impression that I’m a tougher journalist now because of a certain faculty/staff member who yelled at me during an interview and made me cry afterwards. I’ve been counting down the days till the last issue of the Skiff, not fully realizing that come next Monday I won’t know what to do with my afternoon.

Soon I’m going to be an alumna of TCU. I’m not sure I’m ready for that even though the Alumni Association is practically sucking me in. I just want to scream at them to wait, because I really haven’t stopped being a student just yet.

I guess what it all boils down to is that my resume can never truly reflect my time here at TCU. College is more that what we’ve all done, it’s who we’ve become.

And I’ve become a better person because of who I’ve met here. They’ve taught me things I could never get in a classroom.

Thank you, Mary Kathleen, Rebecca, Carrie, Alison, Kyle, Robert, Mark, Peter, Gen, Erin and Patrick.

Julie Ann Matonis is a graduating broadcast journalism major from San Antonio who will root for the San Antonio Spurs till she has no voice left. She can be reached at (j.a.matonis@tcu.edu).