Academic Writing: Rewriting My CV and Creating a Cover Letter

Image Source: https://wordvice.com/sample-graduate-cv-for-academic-and-research-positions/

So, I’d intended to write a blog post for Wednesday of last week, but I ran out of time. I was working on academic writing for an opportunity that came up that I wanted to try out for. However, that meant getting my Curriculum Vitae (CV) and Cover Letter in shape. In doing so, I learned a little bit about myself as a writer.

Curriculum Vitae (CV)

So, a CV is an essential tool in the academic community. It functions much like a Resume in that it is the primary tool that jobs, search committees, and the like use to vet potential applicants. Like a resume, the CV is supposed to make a good impression and allow you to stand out, but at the same time, follow all the conventions of the genre. However, a Resume isn’t limited to the 1 or 2 pages that a resume is limited to in that it isn’t supposed to be a “brief” listing of previous jobs, but rather a fairly comprehensive “record” of your life on paper. One should be able to get a glimpse at who you are through your CV.

However, in working on my CV, I seemed to have taken this idea of a “record of one’s life” far too literally. A lot of the information on my CV needed to be jettisoned as either redundant or too much about areas of my life that don’t have a purely “academic” focus. I had to really trim it down and focus on one or two key areas under each item rather than giving a huge description and going into a lot of detail about each item on the CV. I have something that I rather like, but it was difficult. I’m thankful that I had a professor who was willing to look over the draft multiple times and help me with it.

Cover Letter

Like the CV, I thought I knew how to write a good cover letter. I’ve always been taught to keep the cover letter at around 1 page. That meant 3 solid paragraphs: one detailing the position and how/where I’d heard about it and why I thought I might be a good candidate for it, a second detailing my relevant experience and my educational achievements (esp. in academia) that made me a good fit for the position (or at the very least, showed why I felt I was able to apply for the position), and third, a final paragraph wrapping everything up and indicating my overall interest in the position. By the time you had the address, salutation, and closing, along with the signature, that was pretty much all there was room for on one page.

However, when I received the feedback, I realized that I needed more–much more–and that I needed to give specifics where I’d written generalities. In other words, the 1 page limit doesn’t hold anymore (at least not in academia). So, I wrote more, but where my professor’s example was a page and a half, mine had ballooned out to 2 pages. When the professor gave me feedback, I saw where she suggested that I eliminate some of the extra that I’d added in. In the end, the draft ended up at about the same one and a half pages that my professor’s example was.

Lessons Learned

So, from this experience, I’ve learned that I tend to “over-write,” especially when I’m trying to give specifics. I’m a person who likes to know exactly what happened and in what context. When I talk to people, I often close my eyes, not because I’m lying to them or have something to hide, but because I want to visualize the scene and recreate it as exactly as possible from memory.

I’m willing to bet that some of my issues in terms of creative writing stem from simply “over-writing.” I’ve been told by an editor or two that the beginning of the story is “slow” which I’m only now coming to understand and parse as probably too much detail (especially at the beginning). However, it is my desire to set the scene and have the reader understand exactly what’s happening. When I don’t do this, I get editors who say my setting is too sketchily rendered and they don’t know where something is happening (this happened on Unhallowed recently). Like the cover letter, I either end up with too little detail or too much. I need to find a “happy medium” or a “Goldilock Zone” for my writing where I can give enough information so that it is relevant, but not so much information that I bore the editors reading the story.

This is something I’m going to work on going forward–trying to find one or two salient details to include in a story for verisimilitude and then hoping those details are strong enough while I continue on with the story itself. I’m also going to watch out for this in my academic writing as well–I’m stuck on the “Introduction” of my dissertation because I can’t seem to find the right “path.” However, I think the right path is already there–my dissertation proposal. I need to use it as my springboard/outline and push forward so that I can make progress on the dissertation.

Somehow, someway, I’ve got to learn to resist the temptation of the “dark side” and falling into the trap of over-writing (which I’m doing now, by the way, on this blog entry). I’ve made the point and now it is time for me to stop writing.

Stop writing, Sidney.

Stop.

Put down the keyboard!

Finis.

End.

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora WolfRead Childe Roland for Free at Electric SpecPurchase  HawkeMoon  on Amazon.com (Paperback) or eBookPurchase  Dragonhawk  on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase  WarLight  on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase  Ship of Shadows  on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindlePurchase  Faerie Knight  on Amazon.com (Paperback) or KindleCurrently Working On (May 2021):Unhallowed (Weird Western Story)
2021 Revision: Completed; Out to MarketStarlight, Starbright (Science Fiction Story)
2021 Revision: Completed; Out to Market.The Independent (Science Fiction Story)
2021 Revision: In ProgressTo Dance the Sea of Storms (Fantasy Story)
Prewrite: Completed, Plan & Outline: Completed, Write a first draft: Completed, Revision: In Progress