Memo to applicants for any job, position, whatever:
Do not try to convince the reviewers of your application of your tenacity and determination by describing how you obsessively pursued a young woman who repeatedly turned down your advances and invitations. This is disturbing. The fact that you did not give up in the face of obstacles is not an admirable quality. Leave her alone, if you have not already done so.
Do not try to convince the reviewers of your application of your tenacity and determination by describing how you obsessively pursued a young woman who repeatedly turned down your advances and invitations. This is disturbing. The fact that you did not give up in the face of obstacles is not an admirable quality. Leave her alone, if you have not already done so.
12 comments:
I am sorry to say that I can easily imagine reading such an application.
bwahahahahahaaaa!
It is pretty harmful how certain (terrible) movies/pop culture portry stalking as a virtue.
Someone actually needs to be told this?
Terrifying! I would really, really not want that dude in my department. How does anyone not know this is creepy and wrong?
This really appeared in an application? I find it so hard to believe. And yet Mark says he can easily imagine it, so this, or something like this, has happened often enough before. I'm even more grateful to "fate" that I haven't encountered situations/people like this.
MM
Oh my, that is too rich!
Did the story at least have a happy ending?
At first I thought, "No, that is too absurd, nobody could be so utterly clueless," but then I realised that anybody with few enough social skills to not get the message after being turned down a few times would be stunned enough to think their relentless pursuit was a virtue. I pity the people (of any sex) who have to work with him.
Unfortunately I knew a science graduate student who was exactly like this, who pursued a friend of mine. She kept escalating her refusals, eventually the department head had a personal conversation with the student telling him to stop contacting her. He *still* persisted and the final thing that stopped it was a personal conversation involving the police. He did get his PhD eventually from that department and I don't know if he ever figured out that what he had been doing was not a virtue. Certainly at the time he presented his persistence to her as a sign of how strongly he felt, and wanted her to recognize that this was an admirable trait.
Like Mark, I am sorry to say that I too can easily imagine reading such an application.
I hope he was 70 years old and didn't know any better because that's how things were done "in his day"...
Would one be obligated to report that person for stalking?
Wow. Another FSP post that I'd desperately like to believe isn't true, but almost certainly is. (Is it worth holding out hope this is and undergrad admissions essay? Surely even most sociopaths will have learned not to brag about stalking in a work context by the time they leave college, right?)
I suppose one can take heart from the fact that this is astonishing rather than expected. And, it no longer forms the basic plot of all romance-related media in the way it once did.
Haha, totally did this once! However, it fell into the selection criteria 'ability to influence others.' Any chance this application was written in poetic verse?
Also, take heed from Trent and 'just relaxx aye!' The guy was probably having a laugh.
Post a Comment