Recruiting for a job and I'm struck by the ineptitude of graduate CVs.

[redgunamo]

I have an Arsenal pencil from a secret santa the other year, so it's ok.

It all fits really. These are the children of the Divorced Parents and Abandoned Families generation. As B points out, the whole point of having a career used to be to feed your wife and bairns. But what happens when your own parents always made it clear that families were really an optional, even undesirable, extra. So, if there's no intention to raise a family, there's no need to take preparation for a career, or even a career itself, seriously, either, is there.

Unless there is? Rather than a means to an end, work becomes an end in itself; Arsene Wenger, for instance. Or it becomes a mere frivolous, incidental, inconsequential, almost optional activity; like IUFG's post-grad applicants, seeking only to earn enough money as is necessary, as quickly as possible, to finance their next trip around the world, or their fledgling rock band or whatever.

We've actually managed to go full circle here. And in both directions simultaneously; a successful career means no time or energy to raise a family. And, indeed, the initial disinclination to raise a family, in fact, frees up enough time and energy to have a successful career. But, perhaps ironically, fewer people nowadays will really desire either outcome

[World's End Stella]

Wait until you ask them to add something up, b. We have students here who arrive with an A in A Level Maths. THey then proceed to struggle with even the most basic calculations and have to take a remedial maths class in their first year.

I once greeted 50 graduates at an overseas graduation ceremony. Not one of them could speak english.

Education isnt what is used to be (nothing is) .....

I struggle to believe the maths bit. An A level in maths involves enough calculus that anyone with an A would not struggle with simple calculations.

I call bullsh1t.

[redgunamo]

I was taught it 30-something years ago. It certainly works - much like the method p describes for remembering the 'You and I/You and me thing.

The thing that people who just think I'm a grammar nazi don't get is that, once you learn these things, it actually hurts your soul when you hear them misused. If I hear someone say amount when they mean number, describe a company as a plural or say less when they mean fewer, it's like nails down a blackboard for me.

Yes. But it must be said that all this is a bit rich coming from a bunch of Cockneys.