Resume Article

The reading for this class was about the importance of resume building, and articulated the idea of the resume as a genre. The idea behind this is that resumes are a means of social action that should effectively balance the needs of the writer with the needs of the reader. Resumes are utilized to outline and organize social information in an easily understood format. The article discusses an assignment similar to the one we are doing in class for our resumes. The idea behind the assignment in the article and in class is to teach/learn a method of writing for a specific genre that will help students to understand the importance of the specific genre and also to provide the basic principles applied to writing for the specific medium. This is very important because even though as students we may feel we have had plenty of exposure to a topic and that we understand all there is to know about it, but in doing an assignment like this we are able to construct and analyze our techniques and critique them all while learning new methods. The importance of this taking place in the classroom as an assignment is that there are no real life repercussions to be had. It is a learning and evolving experience in which we are able to present something as if it is reality (in this case an application for a job) and examine it almost as a template or draft assignment, allowing us to gain further insight into the mechanics of our own writing and its effectiveness and to gain insightful advice in regards to any corrections that may need to be made. I believe it is important that this takes place in class because we are free to experiment with our writing and our resume to see what works best, without the worry of real world consequences such as the threat of failure or being ostracized.