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The Resume
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by Tom Griffith
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A few years ago, I taught at Showa Boston, the semester-abroad campus of Showa Women’s University in Tokyo, and had the opportunity to teach at the home campus for one semester.
As I got to know my Japanese colleagues, both in Boston and Tokyo, I felt for the first time a sense of national inferiority. My God, I thought, these people are better than me. They’re smarter. They’re quicker. They’re harder working. They’re more polite. They’re more disciplined. They’re thinner. They’re cleaner.
Worst of all was their capacity to plan ahead in detail. For me, the future has always felt like a guerrilla army, one that lurks invisibly till making a sudden surprise attack – Banzai! Application deadline! April 15! Wife’s birthday! Middle age! Who knew these awful events were just around the corner?
For me, getting through a day is challenge enough, and I hoped the Japanese talent for thinking ahead would rub off on me after a semester teaching in Tokyo. It already had a bit, like the way my handwriting had improved—it had become smaller and neater—since joining Showa University. I’d even become a pencil snob, scorning wooden ones in favor of the mechanical sort that require specific lead sizes of .5 or .7 millimeters.
So, I was doing what I had to in preparation for a four-month stay in Tokyo.
Then came a request for my resume which the Japanese Ministry of Education needed to okay a work permit. I dug one out from the last time I had looked for work. In the 1990s.
I find resumes to be poignant documents. First, they reduce decades of your life to a few terse lines, which so often chart a course far different from what you had hoped and dreamed. You stare at yours, this bare chronology of jobs, and reflect that your one shot at human excellence has dribbled away, with so much time squandered, chances missed, talents wasted.
Second, resumes are notorious for stretching the truth. Like failed salesmen, they try to impart a sheen of respectability, the best possible face, onto years of muddling through. On resumes, you are never “unemployed,” but “between jobs.” You’re never “fired,” you make a “career shift.” You are always on top of things: graduating with honors, pursuing a career, having a professional objective.
But here I was, needing to update mine, so I added a few lines, had it translated by the Boston staff, and sent it off to my designated handler in the SWU English department.
Very promptly, it was sent back. Sorry, Griffith-sensei, my handler wrote, but the Japanese format differs from the American. Your resume should have the most recent job first and work backward. I had done the opposite.
That was a reasonable enough request, so I reversed the order and sent it again.
The next morning it was back in my email. The order was now fine, but it needed more detail.
Ah, detail, that other point on which the Japanese excel and I come up short. They say God is in the details. They say the same thing about the devil. Whichever way it is, I don’t have that “detail-orientation.” I flatter myself as being more holistic, global, a big-picture kind of guy. But all that translates to: I’m crap on details.
Still, if they wanted detail, I’d give detail. Specifically, said the request, don’t just write the years of employment, give us the months. So, that stint I had teaching ESL to Dominican immigrants in a Massachusetts can factory in 1987 – which months exactly?
As I strained to recall, I could hear again the thump-thump-thump of the metal-stamping machinery just outside the conference room where my classes were held. The management were good guys who wanted to help their employees advance, so they let them study English on company time. There was a cute girl in the class named Luz who brought me lunch of rice, beans, pork, and plantain. She joked about marrying a Puerto Rican, any Puerto Rican, because then she could get US citizenship. She dressed with flair, even in work clothes, and had these scarves that—
Wait a minute, that may not be the detail they wanted. Which months? Months!? Why in God’s name does it matter? And yet, it must matter, or why else are we all driving Japanese cars? Details, precision, the fine points, are important. So, the months were May to October. Maybe. Tap-tap, and off went the resume to Tokyo.
The next morning, it was back. Thank you for providing the months of employment. Now as to your publications?
I bristled. What publications? I’m a teacher, not a scholar. I should note here that our Boston program is basically the semester-abroad for English majors. Our faculty are good, hard-working teachers with master’s degrees. Yet ESL teachers learn early on that we are at the bottom of the education food chain. We are mechanics of the language and proud of it. We are not your usual academicians who must publish or perish. The Tokyo colleagues are and do, but not us. Why doesn’t the Ministry of Education grasp this distinction?
No matter. Don’t get huffy, Griffith-sensei, I told myself. Calm down. Conform.
One American teacher in Japan wrote a memoir called Learning to Bow. It’s a good title, with layers of meaning. He learned that in Japan, you don’t just make the physical gesture, you must internalize the attitude of obedience, humility, deference to authority – everything that Americans stink at. I reminded myself of this.
Ah, wait a minute! True, I don’t read, much less publish in academic journals, but I was once editor of the newsletter MATSOL Currents for the state teacher’s organization. I wrote some breezy, journalistic pieces on classroom practice – testing, vocabulary, tape journals, etc. Technically, they were words rendered into ink on paper, hence publications. Tap-tap.
Next morning: Thank you for the list of titles, but could you provide summaries of each piece?
Boiling, boiling, boiling! Summaries of 500-word articles? A summary of one called “Dirty Words” about how to teach obscene slang? What are they thinking?
Calm down, I again told myself, but I had other things to do besides polish a resume. Still, I put aside urgent daily work and slowly ground out summaries. Tap-tap.
Next day: Thank you for the summaries, but which of these articles would be considered academic?
None! None, damn you! I never claimed they were academic! You backed me into a corner! Why do you torment me in this manner?
But ok…, take a deep breath. Just answer the question. Tap-tap. “None.”
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. The process is almost at an end. However . . .
By now I am on the verge of frenzy. Is this some kind of test, some ordeal out of a fairy tale to prove my worthiness? “To win the princess, you must fight the giant, slay the dragon, and work endlessly on the resume.”
Were they trying to make me crack? Or worse, was it a foretaste of what I would be doing in Japan? Did I really want to go to place of such high, unattainable standards, where no amount of detail was ever adequate, no effort sufficient, where like Tantalus in Hell, I would be doomed to reach up hopelessly, in agony, after an ever-receding ideal of perfection? Did I want that?
Well, yeah, I did. Think of the sushi, I told myself. Think of the onsen, the hot spring baths. Learn to bow, learn to bow, learn to bow, I reminded myself.
The final question concerned my junior year abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland. At Japanese universities, you may study overseas, but you generally get no credit, and it delays your graduation. Was this true in my case? Did that year delay the granting of my undergraduate degree?
Now, as to how this would impact Japanese higher education in the 21st century, how it might undermine or pollute academic standards, I have no idea. More wondrous to me was that anyone would have the time or imagination to raise the question. The answer was simple, perhaps too simple.
Was there a trick? Would one last misstep ruin everything? I wrote a terse response—“No”—and my finger hovered tremulously over the “Send” key. I thought I heard from somewhere a god-like voice intoning, “Is that your final answer?”
Tap-tap.
And then it was over. The next morning, I found a final message. Your resume is complete and should be accepted by the Ministry.
Complete? Accepted? It seemed too good to be true. The resume had grown in length from one page to sixteen. It had many boxes and was now bilingual. I printed a copy and felt its heft and thought, I could use this as a weapon. But great was my relief, and I shouted to my officemates, who had been hearing of the ordeal blow by blow, “It’s over!” They returned my happy shouts.
No more questions. No more heartburn the minute I opened the morning email. I had passed the test!
I went to the washroom to dash cold water onto my face. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of my image in the mirror. What had happened? My shoulders looked slumped. My neck bent, my head lowered, and my brow was furrowed, as if in abasement.
Ah. I was learning to bow.
As I got to know my Japanese colleagues, both in Boston and Tokyo, I felt for the first time a sense of national inferiority. My God, I thought, these people are better than me. They’re smarter. They’re quicker. They’re harder working. They’re more polite. They’re more disciplined. They’re thinner. They’re cleaner.
Worst of all was their capacity to plan ahead in detail. For me, the future has always felt like a guerrilla army, one that lurks invisibly till making a sudden surprise attack – Banzai! Application deadline! April 15! Wife’s birthday! Middle age! Who knew these awful events were just around the corner?
For me, getting through a day is challenge enough, and I hoped the Japanese talent for thinking ahead would rub off on me after a semester teaching in Tokyo. It already had a bit, like the way my handwriting had improved—it had become smaller and neater—since joining Showa University. I’d even become a pencil snob, scorning wooden ones in favor of the mechanical sort that require specific lead sizes of .5 or .7 millimeters.
So, I was doing what I had to in preparation for a four-month stay in Tokyo.
Then came a request for my resume which the Japanese Ministry of Education needed to okay a work permit. I dug one out from the last time I had looked for work. In the 1990s.
I find resumes to be poignant documents. First, they reduce decades of your life to a few terse lines, which so often chart a course far different from what you had hoped and dreamed. You stare at yours, this bare chronology of jobs, and reflect that your one shot at human excellence has dribbled away, with so much time squandered, chances missed, talents wasted.
Second, resumes are notorious for stretching the truth. Like failed salesmen, they try to impart a sheen of respectability, the best possible face, onto years of muddling through. On resumes, you are never “unemployed,” but “between jobs.” You’re never “fired,” you make a “career shift.” You are always on top of things: graduating with honors, pursuing a career, having a professional objective.
But here I was, needing to update mine, so I added a few lines, had it translated by the Boston staff, and sent it off to my designated handler in the SWU English department.
Very promptly, it was sent back. Sorry, Griffith-sensei, my handler wrote, but the Japanese format differs from the American. Your resume should have the most recent job first and work backward. I had done the opposite.
That was a reasonable enough request, so I reversed the order and sent it again.
The next morning it was back in my email. The order was now fine, but it needed more detail.
Ah, detail, that other point on which the Japanese excel and I come up short. They say God is in the details. They say the same thing about the devil. Whichever way it is, I don’t have that “detail-orientation.” I flatter myself as being more holistic, global, a big-picture kind of guy. But all that translates to: I’m crap on details.
Still, if they wanted detail, I’d give detail. Specifically, said the request, don’t just write the years of employment, give us the months. So, that stint I had teaching ESL to Dominican immigrants in a Massachusetts can factory in 1987 – which months exactly?
As I strained to recall, I could hear again the thump-thump-thump of the metal-stamping machinery just outside the conference room where my classes were held. The management were good guys who wanted to help their employees advance, so they let them study English on company time. There was a cute girl in the class named Luz who brought me lunch of rice, beans, pork, and plantain. She joked about marrying a Puerto Rican, any Puerto Rican, because then she could get US citizenship. She dressed with flair, even in work clothes, and had these scarves that—
Wait a minute, that may not be the detail they wanted. Which months? Months!? Why in God’s name does it matter? And yet, it must matter, or why else are we all driving Japanese cars? Details, precision, the fine points, are important. So, the months were May to October. Maybe. Tap-tap, and off went the resume to Tokyo.
The next morning, it was back. Thank you for providing the months of employment. Now as to your publications?
I bristled. What publications? I’m a teacher, not a scholar. I should note here that our Boston program is basically the semester-abroad for English majors. Our faculty are good, hard-working teachers with master’s degrees. Yet ESL teachers learn early on that we are at the bottom of the education food chain. We are mechanics of the language and proud of it. We are not your usual academicians who must publish or perish. The Tokyo colleagues are and do, but not us. Why doesn’t the Ministry of Education grasp this distinction?
No matter. Don’t get huffy, Griffith-sensei, I told myself. Calm down. Conform.
One American teacher in Japan wrote a memoir called Learning to Bow. It’s a good title, with layers of meaning. He learned that in Japan, you don’t just make the physical gesture, you must internalize the attitude of obedience, humility, deference to authority – everything that Americans stink at. I reminded myself of this.
Ah, wait a minute! True, I don’t read, much less publish in academic journals, but I was once editor of the newsletter MATSOL Currents for the state teacher’s organization. I wrote some breezy, journalistic pieces on classroom practice – testing, vocabulary, tape journals, etc. Technically, they were words rendered into ink on paper, hence publications. Tap-tap.
Next morning: Thank you for the list of titles, but could you provide summaries of each piece?
Boiling, boiling, boiling! Summaries of 500-word articles? A summary of one called “Dirty Words” about how to teach obscene slang? What are they thinking?
Calm down, I again told myself, but I had other things to do besides polish a resume. Still, I put aside urgent daily work and slowly ground out summaries. Tap-tap.
Next day: Thank you for the summaries, but which of these articles would be considered academic?
None! None, damn you! I never claimed they were academic! You backed me into a corner! Why do you torment me in this manner?
But ok…, take a deep breath. Just answer the question. Tap-tap. “None.”
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. The process is almost at an end. However . . .
By now I am on the verge of frenzy. Is this some kind of test, some ordeal out of a fairy tale to prove my worthiness? “To win the princess, you must fight the giant, slay the dragon, and work endlessly on the resume.”
Were they trying to make me crack? Or worse, was it a foretaste of what I would be doing in Japan? Did I really want to go to place of such high, unattainable standards, where no amount of detail was ever adequate, no effort sufficient, where like Tantalus in Hell, I would be doomed to reach up hopelessly, in agony, after an ever-receding ideal of perfection? Did I want that?
Well, yeah, I did. Think of the sushi, I told myself. Think of the onsen, the hot spring baths. Learn to bow, learn to bow, learn to bow, I reminded myself.
The final question concerned my junior year abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland. At Japanese universities, you may study overseas, but you generally get no credit, and it delays your graduation. Was this true in my case? Did that year delay the granting of my undergraduate degree?
Now, as to how this would impact Japanese higher education in the 21st century, how it might undermine or pollute academic standards, I have no idea. More wondrous to me was that anyone would have the time or imagination to raise the question. The answer was simple, perhaps too simple.
Was there a trick? Would one last misstep ruin everything? I wrote a terse response—“No”—and my finger hovered tremulously over the “Send” key. I thought I heard from somewhere a god-like voice intoning, “Is that your final answer?”
Tap-tap.
And then it was over. The next morning, I found a final message. Your resume is complete and should be accepted by the Ministry.
Complete? Accepted? It seemed too good to be true. The resume had grown in length from one page to sixteen. It had many boxes and was now bilingual. I printed a copy and felt its heft and thought, I could use this as a weapon. But great was my relief, and I shouted to my officemates, who had been hearing of the ordeal blow by blow, “It’s over!” They returned my happy shouts.
No more questions. No more heartburn the minute I opened the morning email. I had passed the test!
I went to the washroom to dash cold water onto my face. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of my image in the mirror. What had happened? My shoulders looked slumped. My neck bent, my head lowered, and my brow was furrowed, as if in abasement.
Ah. I was learning to bow.
Tom Griffith lives in Beverly, Massachusetts. He recently retired from a career teaching ESL. For 26 years, he worked for Showa Women’s University at its Boston campus. He traveled often to Tokyo and taught there one semester. He is the author of Anasara: A Peace Corps Journey. Reach him at: [email protected]
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