Course requirements don’t teach real world skills

It’s that time of year again. Whether you’re a graduating senior who’s starting to apply for… It’s that time of year again. Whether you’re a graduating senior who’s starting to apply for jobs or post-undergraduate school, or you’re an underclassman who’s starting to think about internships and summer jobs, it’s time to create or revamp the old resume.

I had a lot of jobs before college, but none required a legitimate resume. A business class I took my sophomore year of high school taught me how to write a resume, but I had few opportunities to apply what I had learned. I didn’t exactly need an impressive resume to be hired to make sandwiches at Quizno’s.

So when it came time in college for me to create my resume – when what I wrote and how I formatted it actually mattered – I was lost. Although there are several resources online offering guidance on resume writing, the numerous possibilities of templates were overwhelming and it was hard to understand which format was right for me.

Regardless, I created a draft of my first legitimate resume. And I was proud of it. My confidence was abruptly and brutally shot down, however, when I showed it to my friend – a business student at CMU – who actually laughed at it. He compared mine to his and I immediately understood. The way he formatted his made it look complete and full of accomplishments. The way he worded it made it seem like he was a very important player in everything he participated in.

When I asked him how he learned to create such an impressive resume, he said that for one of his classes, part of his grade depended on submitting a resume. While my feeling of being clueless was slightly alleviated, I began to wonder: How come I never learned how to write a resume in any of my classes? Why weren’t we all required to learn this?

I realized that, in my three-and-a-half-year college career, there are many practical things that I didn’t learn, but feel I should have. And for each of those important things, there are probably five other things that I learned which I probably won’t think about ever again and don’t apply to my life. I can acknowledge that some of that is my fault. I chose my classes every semester and the knowledge was out there if I chose to seek it, but I also believe it is the responsibility of universities to arm students with practical knowledge that will be critical to their progression regardless of their choice of major or post-college plans.

In order to graduate from the College of Arts and Sciences, students must not only complete the requirements within their majors, but must also complete three natural science classes, three international foreign culture classes, a class in the arts and several others. I understand the goal of this strategy is to expose students to a multitude of fields, thus providing them with a diverse and well-rounded education. I fear that by being forced to take some of these classes, however, students are missing out on learning information that will be helpful and applicable even when the class ends.

I think it should be required for students to take classes that teach them the skills they need, such as resume and cover letter writing and finance management, sooner rather than later. I don’t mean to downplay the value of current requirements – I thoroughly enjoyed many of them – but when it comes to some of them, if they’re not related to the student’s specific field of study, they probably won’t be of much use to him, whereas learning how to write a good resume will. I know that classes teaching such skills are available, though it’s sometimes hard for students to hear about them. Other times, students’ schedules are so filled with the necessary requirements that they don’t have the time to add such optional electives if they want to graduate on time.

When it comes to knowledge and education, we basically have the world at our fingertips. We have some of the most intelligent people teaching us things about every subject you could think of. If you’re not studying science but want to take an astronomy class to learn the difference between red and white dwarves because that interests you, than you absolutely should. You shouldn’t, however, be forced to take it or a class like it just because you need your third natural science class to graduate.

As a university, we should be proud of the wide and diverse course selection we offer. We should also think about making the mandatory classes the ones that have the greatest probability of helping the greatest number of students, leaving other classes to optional enrollment. After all, when we leave this wonderful bubble that we call college, we’re faced with the real world, and I doubt any employers would be happy hearing, “I know my resume’s kind of weak and my cover letter sucks, but I can tell you the difference between a white and a red dwarf.”

Do you know the difference between a white and a red dwarf? E-mail Anjali at amn17@pitt.edu.