Do it for the resume: this is a way of life for high school students.
Volunteering, networking and taking hard classes is what high school students will do just to have a better looking resume than the next person. The question is, "why?" The answer that pops up most often is to stand out to scholarship committees and gain entrance to Ivy League colleges.
Students study for two to eight years and come out a scholar with no idea what the real world is like because they’ve spent the better part of their 20s enclosed in a community that focuses on nothing but academic excellence. At the end of the day, they are drop dead broke and swimming in a bottomless ocean of debt.
The journey doesn’t stop there. They have to impress potential employers and market themselves to get a job. They will spend the rest of their lives paying off the debt they accrued to get that job. Yet, they still devote what seems like half their lifetimes to developing their resume just so they can wave it around like a hundred dollar bill in front of everyone’s condescending glare.
The one that gets to me the most is the volunteering. It is hard to find a person in high school that loves to make time in their hectic schedule to volunteer at the banquet without having a rather selfish motive. Many high schoolers volunteer to polish up their resume. It is assumed that a selfless individual looks better on an application than an overachiever with no devotion to helping the community.
Don’t get me wrong, overachievers can be their own kind of selfish and because of their impressive work ethic can get them picked for a job over selfless individuals just as well. In the end, whether or not you are an overachiever or a selfish high schooler either consciously or subconsciously you share a common interest, to embellish your resume.
The next big item is networking. This one goes out to all of those introverted individuals that still find the will power and motivation to pretend to be extroverts, myself included. If an individual that would rather be at peace in a solitary environment is found to be attending a personal meeting or club, it can be concluded that they are, yet again, trying to work magic for their resumes.
Like the saying goes, it’s not what you know it’s who you know. In other words, some people are willing to sacrifice their own comfort and step outside of those zones to enhance their resume.
Next is what I call overkill, but it still works: taking tons of college credit. Students impress potential colleges by taking college classes in high school. Employers look at it as dedication to their education, while the rest of their friends look at them like an exemplary student with the brains of a genius.
But what is the real motive behind taking college classes? Students could be using that extra-required study time to hang out with friends or doing their favorite hobby. I would argue that the student is trying to get ahead and add determined to their list of qualities to their resumes.
Aside from being an investment to your education, many of us take college courses because it helps on a resume, but there are many other reasons for taking college courses as well and they vary from person to person.
In the end, it can be concluded that a short autobiographical sheet of paper can motivate people to navigate their lives in different ways. They volunteer, they work extra and they network to improve their resumes with the goal of success and happiness at the end of their hard work.
