Take a good long look at this paper. This is your resumé. It doesn’t really matter how special your mommy said you were, how many beers you can shotgun in an hour, or how good you have gotten at making jokes about the ratio, because this piece of paper is you. “Oh snap,” you’ll say. Unless you happen to be one of those people who joins 15 clubs, speaks 12 languages, plays three sports, and works 40 hours a week in addition to having a 21 credit course load, your resumé will need some finagling. Let me show you some examples.

Did you take an introduction to computer programming course? Congratulations, you are now proficient in C++. Have you ever accidentally opened Excel when you were trying to compose a drunken haiku in Microsoft Word? Good for you, person knowledgeable of the Microsoft Office suite of applications. Have you ever tried a pick-up line in French to try and come off as suave and cultured? Go ahead and write that down, you master of foreign languages. As you can see, finagling is far from outright lying. Rather, it is simply a mild stretch of the truth for personal gain with a heavy emphasis on fabricating adjectives.