Self-deprecation and Bonnaroo

As I prepare to finish my last semester of college and enter the World of the Working, I've had to come to terms with the fact that self-deprecation, while often amusing and unfortunately, all too easy to do, is kind of a cop out.  For example, I could say something like "Well I spent Saturday night picking fleas off of my cat with my mom.  Guess this will prepare me for my future job as a homeless person."  In my humble opinion, this is pretty hilarious, however, it's not the kind of attitude, or humor I want to be exhibiting as I start the long process of convincing potential employers that I'm awesome.  The kind of joke I should be making doesn't come as easily.  "I spent my Saturday night picking fleas off my cat with my mom.  I just hope we get enough by next Saturday so I can take them to the Farmer's Market." Was that funny?  Not really.  Did that joke come easily?  I don't want to talk about it.  Did I attempt to turn something potentially lame into something that sounds creative, entrepreneurial, and interesting?  Yes.  So I guess I'm going to try to do that kind of thing in job interviews.  In theory.

The point is, self-deprecation has an important place in American humor.  But as someone who really struggles not to shoot myself in the foot and look like an idiot during interviews* I really need to cut it out for a while.  Not to mention the fact that as a young woman with not a whole lot of experience, I will probably already get less respect than my male counterparts.  Not to mention the fact that I'm cute and sweet.  See?  I really have a lot of things in my nature working against me.  But I've also got a lot of good stuff going on and know that I could be an awesome employee.  But first I need use my sense of humor to do something better than make fun of myself.




*For evidence of me looking like an idiot during an interview, I suggest the documentary in which I played a supporting role to Mike Seeger, Why Old Time?  At 18, I was much less articulate than the 6 year old in the documentary.
** Or, you can consider the quote from me in one of Cleveland's newspapers, when I use the phrase "The Bonnaroo of the Midwest" to talk about what Folk Fest could be.  Fortunately, after saying that, I told the reporter that that's not really what we were trying to do.  Both of these things got published, so I only looked like a slight idiot.  I don't know why I said that.  I don't even LIKE the idea of Bonnaroo. In fact, my favorite thing about Bonnaroo is this guy I know, Brad's Facebook statuses about how bad the line up always is.