38. The tyranny of the CV.

Another example of terminology-inflation in academe (see Reason 35) is evident in the “curriculum vitae.” What in most other walks of life is referred to in standard American English as a résumé (an already pretentious three-syllable French word) is in academic professions referred to by an even more pretentious six syllables of Latin. (The former term, incidentally, is much older than the latter.) But the inflation does not end there. In most real-world contexts, résumés are as brief and to-the-point as possible, but the typical professor’s CV is pages and pages long. It is so long because it lists every paper that he has ever presented at a conference, every article, book chapter, or book that he has ever published, every class that he has ever taught, every grant that he has ever received, every honor with which he has ever been bestowed, and often every professional organization to which he pays a membership fee.

Of course, this means that there is now an expectation that a strong CV will be many pages long. Graduate students with an eye on the academic job market, therefore, have to start worrying about collecting items for their CVs early in their graduate programs. In fact, you will spend far more time in graduate school doing things for the sake of putting them on your CV than you will ever spend pondering what you are studying for its own sake. Unfortunately, if you want an academic job, you really don’t have a choice in the matter.