you can be trained to be a business at no extra cost

Over the summer I received an email addressed like so:

Dear Bree:

As a former university professor, it gives me special pleasure to congratulate you on graduating as a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College. Your outstanding academic record at one of the nation’s top universities distinguishes you in ways that are of considerable interest to us.

This is typically the point where I stop reading. And it’s not just my short attention span regarding long paragraphs. For one thing, it’s obviously a form letter, probably sent out to every new Phi Beta Kappa member who, imagining all sorts of illustrious opportunities reserved for card-carrying PBK members, eagerly forked over their email address.

The “considerable interest to us” is mildly alarming too, partly because it’s shrouded in corporatespeak, but mostly because “us” is simply one of those scary totalitarian words. I can’t think of many situations in which “us” is innocuous. There’s the mafia us: “We’d like you to come with us—just for a talk;” the interrogation us: “Why don’t you tell us what you were doing the night of the 26th?”; and then, of course, the parental us: “Your behavior really concerns us. We’ve put a call in to Dr. Schliderschluck.” “Us” exploits the power of the We: strength in numbers, the hegemony of a cohesive unit. And Orwellian images spring unbidden to mind.

However, the mysterious email sender did get my alma mater right, which deserved some street cred. And my name was spelled correctly, which might not seem impressive until one considers the amazing assortment of misspellings I’ve borne personal witness to over the years, everything from “Brie” to “Bry” to the inexplicable “Bra.” No, my name was not inspired by my mother’s affinity for her Hanes® TAGLESS® All-Over Comfort Wirefree Wonderbra, thank you very much.

I was also struck by the articulate phrasing of the email that appeared so magically in my inbox. With its excellent word choice and elegant grammar, it stood out from other unsolicited emails boasting titles like “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT: yeah so I am sexy Russian girl” and “you can be trained to be a police at no extra cost.” Can I be trained to be a police? I’m not usually one to demand the presence of a “man,” but this might be an exception. What if I want to be trained to be a fire instead? A fore? A handy? Where will it stop?

The email continued:

By way of background, the D. E. Shaw group is a global investment and technology development firm with an international reputation for financial innovation, technological leadership, and an extraordinarily distinguished staff. Today, the D. E. Shaw group encompasses a number of closely related entities with approximately 1100 employees and $35 billion in aggregate capital.

Here is where my English and European Studies degree begins to fail me. My last glance at anything-econ was on the AP Macro Exam in high school. I can fairly say that “global investment and technology development firm” is a semantically empty concept in my world. I understand the individual words of course, but strung together they are senseless. The phrase evokes vague phantasms of some tall building in New York with shiny black marble floors and a glut of business suits wearing the faceless people inside them. What does one do in a global investment and technology development firm? Besides innovate financially, lead technologically, and distinguish oneself extraordinarily?

But here’s the part that really caught my eye:

While we would certainly welcome applications from individuals with a background or interest in mathematics, computer science, or economics, we are equally interested in speaking with brilliant liberal arts graduates, regardless of major, who are open to the possibility of a career they may never have previously considered.

So there it was. The D. E. Shaw group was looking to hire beyond their usual target areas. It’s like they were speaking to me personally, me with my messy tangle of liberal arts interests and degrees. The venerable D. E. Shaw thought I was one of the brilliant liberal arts graduates of whom he spoke! The mystique was intoxicating; the flattery worked. As anyone will agree, it feels good to be pursued… even by way of a form letter.

I stayed up all night tweaking my resume and crafting what I hoped was a brilliant cover letter (the time stamp on my outgoing email reads 4:53 am, so “brilliant” probably isn’t the best word for it). Excitedly, I waited.

Two days later, I received a response. It was no longer from D. E. Shaw’s personal email but from some fellow named Strategic Growth (RD). It was addressed “Dear Candidate.” I had already regressed from “Bree” to “Candidate.” Damn.

This particular email thanked me for submitting my resume and politely requested additional details. Attached was an information sheet asking for all sorts of things: awards/accomplishments, prior public speaking experience, GRE scores, SAT scores, and other information that Mr. Growth (RD) deemed “a bit unorthodox.”

But even more unorthodox was the request for

a short expository writing sample, ideally 5 to 10 pages in length. The sample should be entirely your own work, unedited by anyone else. However, you should feel free to edit, correct and otherwise improve the piece yourself. We would like to see writing that you are particularly proud of, and not necessarily a sample of an average day’s work.

For the next five days, I launched into an extensive search and recovery effort. I opened up all the files on my computer from the last three years, sifting through a plethora of papers to find a piece of expository writing I was particularly proud of. After that I went even farther back, digging out the hard drive to my old laptop and going through those files. I searched through hard copies, too, opening up folder after folder and thumbing through notebooks full of essays. This proved particularly challenging due to my general paperwork strategy for college classes: for the first few weeks of each semester I would keep everything in scrupulous order, but soon I’d start stuffing papers into all sorts of places they didn’t belong, cramming them into notebooks until the corners practically vomited paper phlegm. Organizational prowess is not my strong suit.

My hunt unearthed papers on all sorts of things: literature, cultural theory, symbolism, and even one particularly choice paper entitled “Phallacious Freud.” Over my years at Amherst I strayed from traditional papers and took strange diversions into creative subject matter, writing pieces that questioned my own concept of self. The essays became weird, probing examinations of identity, and all the intellectual crises of my undergraduate career came to light in those bent and folded pages. This odd collection of papers formed the bizarre backbone of a very personal journey through theory and self and the sheer terror of the unknown.

In short, not a bit of it was expository. There was nothing I could send.

I still haven’t replied to either D. E. Shaw or Strategic Growth (RD). The information sheet is still sitting partially completed in My Documents. When I first received the email, it seemed the perfect opportunity to try my hand at a “real job,” a career that might actually promise some sort of financial security. So it’s not what I’m interested in, I said to myself. Might as well try it out for six months or a year.

But the problem is, I can’t do that. A global investment and technology development firm just doesn’t excite me, no matter how you look at it; stats like “$35 billion in aggregate capital” don’t get my adrenaline pumping. It’s simply not what I want to do, even for six months or eighteen months or some other arbitrarily set time limit. Maybe this is the point in life when you’re supposed to start making sacrifices, but I don’t think I can do it. I’m just not sure I have it in me.

The email’s still in my inbox. Sometimes I look at it and I wonder. How would my life be different if the D. E. Shaw Group was everything I wanted? If the concept of “us” delighted me? If I’d played sports in college? If I’d majored in mathematics? What would life be like if my shelves were filled with expository writing samples where each word followed a clearly delineated path to the very end?

I guess it wouldn’t be my life.

~ by Bree on October 1, 2007.