Dropping Names

When I was transitioning from years of full time work to a more freelance situation, I desperately wanted my résumé to show how many places I had been and how many different things I'd done. Having had the good fortune of on the job training and promotion, as well as great colleagues who'd believed in me over the years, I had a lot to say. When you work in television, you have the opportunity to drop names of shows that people have heard of.  And I figured I might as well drop them all. When I stood back and looked at this newly revised résumé, it was a bit like "This Is Your Life," as I remembered the people I'd encountered at each place, and how each gig came about.
 
I've been reworking my résumé recently, and, while I still want to make sure I convey the places I've been, somehow, the urge to "drop names" is different now. Now, I'm thinking much more about how each place got me to where I am now-to who I am now. Titles of shows may have the advantage of name-recognition, which I'm sure is valuable, but in this process, I'm finding out much more about the "me" that came out of each of these places. I am not a jumbled mish-mosh of skill sets. Rather, I am a person who has learned new things in a lot of different places, and who has put the best of each experience into the next. I am grateful to have had such a broad set of workplaces, "name recognition" and all, but I am even more grateful to know that anywhere I go, I will be able to enrich the new job with the wisdom learned at the old.
 
If all goes well, my new résumé will become the snapshot of me that no litany of job titles and locations was able to provide. It will drop the name Tracy Casper Lang. And whoever reads it will come away with a pretty good idea of who I am.
 
Well, who I am this week, at least.