i'm special, so special, gotta have some of your attention

It's funny that you often need a vacation the most when it's the least convenient. I'd like to just sit around daydreaming about Hawaii but between trying to find someone to sublet my place, filling out job applications that have to get submitted before I leave town, and working on my damn prospectus, there's very little time to start packing and stocking up on snacks and reading materials for the plane, much less utterly frivolous things like painting my toenails and exfoliating all that pale skin that will be on display soon.

I'm trying to find some source of funding for next year that doesn't include flipping burgers and am now amused and frustrated both at the extent to which academia shelters people and turns them into pale lab rats squinting at the sun as they emerge from the maze. Grad school is just a processing plant designed to spit out batch after batch of academics like so many cans of Spam. So you learn that your top priority is to publish like nobody's business and keep track of all those pubs in a vita.

Now that I've been unplugged from the Matrix and know I don't want an academic job, I feel like a helpless baby as I try to turn my CV into a resume and think about what my skills are and plug said skills. In theory, I've been amassing many valuable skills in my time here. In theory.

I'm not any good at self-promoting. Tooting my own horn just doesn't come naturally to me, but it's something I need to do as of now, even for these small scale campus jobs I'm applying for. Am I qualified to advise undergrads? You bet. Let's conveniently ignore how much I bitch about them. Assistant to the university president? You bet, just ignore my lack of anal retentive organizational skills and the clutter that follows me everywhere.

Somehow "hire me, I kick ass" just doesn't seem professional enough.

Job application/resume writing/self promotion advice and stories welcome.

I've been spending all morning and afternoon on this. Bugger this, it's a beautiful day and J. and I are gonna take off and go to the outlet mall.