A few years ago, the neologism adulting took over the internet. Millennials, Gen Z, even my own cohort of Gen X all immediately understood that adulting consisted of all the loathsome bullshit that goes hand in hand with being a grown-up. Paying taxes, buying life insurance, you know all the stuff Renton and Sick Boy are avoiding at the start of Trainspotting1. But all this adulting boils down to one thing - having a job. It might be at home, it might be non-traditional, it might be something truly bizarre that didn’t exist last year. But most often it means a nine-to-five, suit-and-tie grind. And that, unfortunately, means job hunting.
Last fall, I spent more time than I wanted to diving back into the needle-filled swimming pool of job hunting. Here in Japan, at the university level, that means filling out forms, putting together massive sheafs of paper, paying absurd amounts for location-tracked mailing, getting gorram photo portrait in the right size and orientation, and, oh yeah, writing a thrice-damned curriculum vitae.
For the recent graduate, writing a CV is a particular form of hell developed over the years by bureaucrats as a way of keeping the bright young things of tomorrow from taking over the world. For the middle-aged adult, writing a CV is a different kind of hell. Instead of figuring out which club activities will translate to marketable skills and what classes actually taught you something, you have to condense decades of experience, knowledge, and hard-fought experience into just a few lines: you want my entire history on this little shit2 of paper? Well, get out your reading glasses Brohim, ‘cause this is coming at you in 3 pt sans-serif monospace.
Now let’s say that the bright young things in the university job office don’t just ghost you but you survive the interviews and demonstration lessons and now you’ve got the job you lucky bastard you. Congratulations, now shoehorn your lesson plans into the curriculum and do not ever sully the doorway of the job office ever again.
Ahem. I may, once again, be a little salty about the whole process. Deep breaths. Moving on.
You’ll have noticed that I wedged both curriculum vitae and curriculum into the preceding rant3. And thus, you’ll have surmised that this week, we’re taking a look at this interesting little word and its nefarious cousin, both of which hail from the Roman Empire4.
The form of Latin spoken during the heyday of the Roman Empire, a.k.a. the Gladiator years, is now known as Classical Latin. Over the centuries, as the Empire fractioned and declined, Latin began to evolve into disparate dialects and languages. Modern Italian, French, Spanish, and a host of other languages got their start as a variation of Classical Latin. But one of the odder evolutions of Latin came as a slightly refined version of itself.
As the Holy Roman Empire rose, Latin became less of a common tongue and much more of a clerical one, seeing the most use in the church. But the church, never one to let a good thing go un-molested, decided that it would be in their best interest to make Latin the de facto language of all the newly emerging sciences as well as religion and philosophy. This revision of Latin became known as Neo-Latin and from there into all the flavors of Latin as it’s used today: legal, medical, scientific, and, oh yeah, academic jargon.
Curriculum and curriculum vitae are the same idea looking in opposite directions.
Which brings us back to curriculum, or, as Classical Latin would have it, currere. Back in Roman times, currere meant to run. Specifically, it meant to run on a course. Eventually, as Classical Latin gave way to Neo-Latin, the meaning changed a bit to become more metaphorical and incorporated the idea of a non-running course, as in a course of study. Eventually, this became a series of courses, and, by the 17th century, the idea had fully evolved to mean the modern curriculum.
A couple of centuries later, some unsung genius decided that if a curriculum was all about moving, then a curriculum could look backward as well as forward. A curriculum could sum up your experiences and skills. Hell, it might even be a documentation of your life to that point. Guess what the Latin word for life is? If you said vitae, congratulations, you’ve just earned 10 Learned Points!
So, curriculum and curriculum vitae are the same idea looking in opposite directions. In teaching we use curriculums5 to design full courses of study. We look to create a series of classes that relate and inform each other to help students develop the knowledge base and skills they need to succeed in whatever they choose to do. And, in that ideal world that always seems so elusive, they are always perfectly designed and never have any missteps or misaligned goals.
Meanwhile, your curriculum vitae is more than just a fancy word for résumé. It’s a way of showing where you’ve been, what you learned while you were there, and what it enables you to do from this point forward. In other words, a good curriculum vitae shows the pathways your life has taken and provides the story for every battle fought and every scar earned. They may be a pain in the ass to write, but your CV should be displayed with pride and a tangible sense of accomplishment. You earned it. Literally.
Oh, and about those Learned points you got a few paragraphs ago? They don’t really do anything but they look great on your CV.
Stay curious,
Joel
Adulting means understanding that Trainspotting is not something to aspire to. Neither is Sid and Nancy, Fight Club, or even, dare I say it, Starship Troopers. I love all three of those movies, but advice they ain’t.
I swear that was an actual typo but if there’s a better description of a résumé out there, I’ve never heard it.
I mean, it’s not pretty but it’s how the sausage gets made.
Look, I’m not one of these guys that thinks about the Roman Empire all day. Just their language, culture, lasting impact on political, economic, and medical theory.
Merriam-Webster says it’s correct, so nyah nyah.