Honest resumes

HONEST RESUMES: Kimberley C. Patton, who teaches comparative religion at Harvard Divinity School, says that students ask her how to account for "missing years" or unproductive gaps in their resumes when applying for graduate programs or jobs in parish ministry. She tells them to be honest about these gaps: "Say, 'I took in a child whose mother was in prison....

I battled an addiction, and I won. My husband was crushed by a boulder that fell in our own backyard, and I tended his grave .... My marriage made in heaven turned to hell.... I took photos of skulls left by the Khmer Rouge.'" Those are some of the things that actually happened in the lives of her students. Says Patton, "The gaps on the resume are the abysses into which we fall from time to time, and in the process, fall into the hands of the living God" (Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Winter).

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