Resume Writing Lesson Pays Off…

Dec 20, 2009


So today I was craving some ice cream and thought I’d splurge and get a cone at the silk farm tourist attraction that is near our high-school. It’s a place we don’t frequent often; because those treats are priced at tourist prices (i.e. one ice-cream cone is $1.50, which will buy you a complete meal and drink at the most expensive khmer restaurant in our town). But once in a blue moon I just gotta have that ice cream! (Those close to me know my relationship with ice-cream). anyway. I was finished lesson planning for the week and I didn’t really have much else to do, so I thought, what the heck!

As soon as I pulled up, I saw one of my students from last year, all dressed up in her black uniform with a cute orange bandana in her hair, carrying a tray full of food. She was serving up ice-cream dishes, sandwiches and ice cold drinks which they tempt sweltering tourists with after touring the silk farm.

She turned and saw me and said, “Teacher!!!! How are you!?” with a great big smile on her face. I told her I was doing well and that I missed ice-cream so I decided to come to here to get some.

I was thrilled to see that she had gotten a job and that she was working a fairly busy shift. It’s always interesting to see where someone you worked with in the past…. is now.

Anyway, when she had a moment she came over and talked to me and told me that after she finished her grade 12 exams, she wrote a CV and cover letter and gave it to the people at the silk farm. She thanked me because of the resume writing lesson that we did in her grade twelve class, and now she has been working there for two months. I was so pleased to hear of her success! I felt so proud of her!

To the average person I know this might not seem like such a glamorous job. I’m sure she has to put up with her fair share of impatient tourists, and has to deal with the many different accents of tourists speaking English as their native or second language (all of which I witnessed in my half hour there). But in the eyes of most of the people in my village, this would be considered a good job, and she’s lucky to have it.

So many different things ran through my head while watching her work. Here she is, this young woman, maybe 18 or so, coming from a small village town in Cambodia working at this modern, very nice restaurant with many tourists from all over the world. I watched her interact with this chubby (it’s rare to see a chubby child in Cambodia) Caucasian (I’m not sure from which country) child, but I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say either; yet she kindly waited on him while he demanded his cone.

For the most part, many of these tourists have no idea what it means for her to have that job… waiting tables, at a place like that. They have no idea what the house she lives in looks like, what her local market looks like, what her quality of high-school education was like, or what her daily schedule is, or where the money that she’s making is going. For the most part, they are simply on vacation, touring the main attractions, waiting to be waited on so they can go back inside to the AC in their fancy hotel rooms. This is a generalization of course, but for the average tourist, I can say it’s probably true.

I guess such is life. Nonetheless, I felt very happy and that maybe it’s possible I’m making small differences for at least few people. It’s also nice to know at least some of those students were paying attention!!