From: Sandy P. Klein

To:Sent: Tuesday, September 10, 2002 3:16 PM

Subject: my days with Dickens, my nights with Nabokov, those wee hours with Woolf ...

 

 

Atlanta's 'Wailing Yalie'

We first started talking about this a week ago. Her name is Shawna Gale and she is a Yale graduate. Shawna wrote a column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution a week ago bemoaning her difficulties in finding a job. It wasn't supposed to be this way, you know, because, after all, she graduated from YALE! With an English degree no less!!!!

If you haven't yet read Shawna's column ... here's your link: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/epaper/editions/
tuesday/opinion_c3692eaa024a915a00f5.html

Now ┘ please note the last line of Shawna's complaint: "Will someone please tell me where I went wrong?"

I bring this up again today because Shawna has become somewhat of an Internet hot topic. One particular website has named her the "Wailin' Yalie." Readers of this website have been taking her to task since her column appeared.

No, you don't have to go search for that site. Here's your link: http://www.obscurestore.com/letters.html

OK ┘ let's read her column and take a stab at this "where I went wrong" bit.

It's not your Yale degree that's holding you back, Shawna. It's your leftist, anti-achievement, holier-than-thou, snotty, arrogant elitist attitude.

You somehow have developed an idea that you're really some kind of hot stuff √ with your Yale degree and all √ and that people should be dragging their butts through 10 miles of hot coals just to pick up a copy of your resume!

Just look at these excerpts from your AJC column:

"I have many valuable skills honed during my days with Dickens, my nights with Nabokov, those wee hours with Woolf."

Well, isn't that special. Dickens, Nabokov and Woolf. Those people who could offer you the jobs you want probably don't know Nabokov and Woolf from their neighbor's gardener, and your elitist name-dropping fails to impress them. Tell them you've read the Wall Street Journal and that you're a fan of Thomas Sowell.

"I can read long, wordy, small printed works with relative speed and what's more, I can remember what I have read and write long, wordy, papers about it. ┘"

It's not the reading, it's the understanding. And businessmen don't like long, wordy papers. Tell them you can read something obscure and complicated and translate it into language that someone with a sixth-grade education can understand. So you can write on a Yale level. Can you write on an Atlanta government schools level?

"If I leave the degree behind, I am hired on the spot to wait tables for $10 to $20 an hour depending on tips (and since I have well-developed public relations skills from that internship with the Commission on Human Rights, I will get closer to $20 an hour)."

Take a hint. First of all, there's nothing demeaning about making $20 an hour waiting tables. You'll learn a lot more about people in this job than you did in your years at Yale.

Secondly, forget that internship with the Commission on Human Rights. Telling people about this experience is like tattooing "I'm a brain-dead liberal with no rational thinking skills" on your forehead. If I was looking at your resume I would guess that you think the U.S. is a major worldwide violator of human rights. I would then toss your resume in the circular file.

"Erase Yale from my past and with little trouble I land a retail position helping rich ladies whose most prized degree is their "Mrs." find handbags to match the only type of investment they know how to make: shoes."

Oh, I see. You went to Yale. You can read wordy, small printed works. You have an English degree. You're hot stuff and much too good to spend time with those evil "rich ladies" who have done nothing in life but get married and buy shoes. I can't think of any employer, save a college or university, who would want an elitist snot like you on their payroll.

You want to work for a publishing company? Fine √ what if those "rich ladies" want to buy something you've worked on? Would that offend your Ivy League sensibilities?

Look, Shawna. Cut to the chase. You're a leftist. Private businesses don't like to hire leftists. Get a teaching job at a college or university where you belong. Go look for a permanent paid job on that Commission on Human Rights. Send a resume to the Democratic Party or the U.N. There just has to be a place for you somewhere.