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Archaic Skills You Learn in Florida Prisons

Hand Drafted Résumés

I'm in our Horticulture (Landscape and Turfgrass Management) course here at Blessington, and there is a LOT of book work that we get to do. I've reached one of the later units in the class, and we are tasked with drafting a résumé as part of the work assignment.

Wait, what?

Résumés are useful in documenting our education and work experiences, and in the free world, they are often our ticket to hiring -- an employer will look at it to understand what we bring to the table. As so, I have familiarity with drafting one, and don't mind the idea. Where I take issue is, of course, the way we are expected to do this in prison: by hand, on paper, in ink with no white-out ('correction tape' for you young-uns 🙂) if you make errors -- start all over again from the top.

Some good...?

There is some good that comes of this. I had never used a T-square before. Since I'm using unlined paper on a résumé for a professional look, I need lines to hold my writing from sloping up or down a hill. A T-square combined with an AMES Lettering Guide allows me to draw in measured, light lines using a pencil such as a 6H. I now have a horizontal guide to lay down ink, but I'm still laying down pencil work to have an idea of what will fit and how it will look when I come through to ink:

  • Are my letters clean and consistent?
  • Did I curl the tops of my lowercase L's each time?
  • Is the kerning correct for the word "technology"?
  • Are my bullets the same size?

I will be honest:
Give me a bloody computer so I can type this up in a nice, even, and clean font, and an attractive template like I had on VisualCV!
But, in my overdoing of this assignment, it's trying to teach me acceptance and patience with a process before I get to our module on drafting a design -- we get to plan a landscape on paper (PAPER IN 2026), and we will have to meticulously draw in every single detail for it including where each plant goes (and how much space the mature plant takes to avoid needing to thin plants out).

Still...
I hear my old class finally got new machines. Bring me two of the old ones with a Linux distro that includes LibreOffice, fonts, and templates, and I will show you my works. :)