NOTE TO JOB APPLICANTS

NOTE TO JOB APPLICANTS:

If you're going to apply for a job teaching children in an American public school, you should probably have a rudimentary understanding of the English language and the rudimentary ability to form a coherent, intelligible, meaningful sentence.

I have just wasted hours upon hours going through applicants' paperwork with my editor's eye.  Here's the verdict:

• One candidate writes a shorter cover letter but neither personalizes it nor masters simple subject-verb agreement.
• One candidate has mastered the Oxford comma but doesn't properly capitalize proper nouns.   For example, this candidate went to Diddley college and teaches at Gingerbread Middle school.  (Not really - I made them up, but I didn't make up the capitalization errors.)
• One candidate wrote a gushing novel-length cover letter, riddled with comma errors and run-on sentences.

Before you judge me for judging others, think about this for a few minutes -- the position is for a middle school English teacher.  I wouldn't expect perfect English skills from a science teacher, but jesuschristalmighty.  A bit of advice, people:

IF YOU HAVEN'T MASTERED FOURTH GRADE GRAMMAR AND MECHANICS BY THE TIME YOU EARN SEVERAL DEGREES IN THE FIELD OF ENGLISH EDUCATION, YOU MIGHT WANT TO HAVE SOMEONE PROOFREAD YOUR DAMN COVER LETTER BEFORE YOU HIT "SEND."

Rant over.  Period.  (P.S. Please excuse MY errors.  My eyes gave out hours ago while reading this application/bullshit stuff.)