Saturday, June 05, 2004

Ding Board
Does anyone even use that term, anymore? Did anyone outside Massachusetts ever use it? At MHC (and across New England, I believe), seniors would tape job or graduate school rejection letters next to their dorm doors. We called them Ding Boards. Always the late bloomer, I don't recall even applying for jobs until the summer after I graduated. Having just now typed all the data into yet another online application (Henrico County Libraries), I am here to tell you that I started that first job in November 1988 at about $13K. And I am here to tell you that I am keeping the PoMo Ding Board at right, as an electronic self-shaming, peer pressure tool.

Capital City weather: Damp, 60 degrees.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i'd never heard the term "ding board" until reading yours. what's pomo?
i think if i had a ding board, mine would include these as this moment's top five:
5. beheaders and other committers of violence
4. rapists
3. people who don't hire me
2. people who don't notify your insurance company that you are now eligible to convert your group policy to an individual one, exposing you to the risk of a lapse in coverage
1. migraines

Anonymous said...

oh, except it looks like i didn't use it correctly. those are my top five things i don't *like* (and actually in reverse order). most of the jobs for which i apply seem to result in "thanks for your resume; if it's a match, we'll contact you." so my ding board would technically be mostly empty--no news being bad news, as it were. that said, i would get *some* dings from people who actually bothered to say no outright: bauer controls, calyx software, creative network, foreignexchange translations, hudson global resources, new perspective productions, huntington learning center, and technical employment services.
the ever-hopeful mitch.