Writing a curriculum vitae

is something I have not done for quite a while now. I am never likely to do it again. Phew!

I loathed writing them. Somehow I never seemed to be able to use one I had already written. The position I was applying for always seemed to demand something different. I am not naturally the sort of person who likes to boast and a "cv" is really about saying, "Hey, this is what I am good at. Employ me!"

Nephew Cat was asking for help last night. He has to renew his medical registration again. It is a battle every year. He hates doing it. He delays doing it. The forms go in late. They want new information every time...and there is the dreaded "cv".  

Things have to go in chronological order I remind him.

"But it doesn't make sense if I do it that way!" he wails. 

"And you need to tell them about..." I say

"But it isn't relevant!" he snarls.

This is the ever so patient doctor. He is good with patients, very good. He can elicit information that they didn't realise they could tell him but getting information from him is like getting water from the sand in a desert. You need to dig very deep indeed.

I have to admit I sympathise. I know what sort of thing they are looking for. He knows it too. He wants to be able to do something that requires very careful consideration on his part and on the part of the registration board. The board does not take decisions lightly. 

We talk some more and then I tell him, "Send it through as an email to me or your mother when you think you are finished and I'll read it."

He agrees to do that. I press the "end" button on the phone and go back to filling out a form for myself. It amounts to a sort of "cv" I suppose. It irritates me no end that the people at the other end are asking for this information before I can simply "volunteer" to help one of the doctors in their hospital go and do something somewhere else. I would be surprised if someone actually reads it. My guess is they won't. It will just go into a file somewhere.

It makes me wonder how thoroughly some of these "life stories" get read. Looking at some people who are asking for all this information I suspect they are not read at all. If someone had asked for theirs and read it before they were given the position they would not be employed in that role.