Surprising and Disappointing
As some visitors have already noticed, I removed all direct links to my email address in the website to cut down on spam I receive. I replaced the email link with a contact page where anyone who wishes to get in touch can do so via a web email form. It also gave me the opportunity to write a mini-FAQ on the page to help me answer questions asked of me numerous times, and to help those who wish to write to know what to expect. Since I do reply to almost all emails I receive, and I do take quite a bit of time to write them, I'd like to save time by not repeating what I had already written down to someone else.
For instance, I do get a lot of emails from students asking for interviews for help with their school projects, and for them, I've always taken a rather firm stance that they should communicate properly before I help them. These are young people trying to prepare themselves for the real world and if they ever hope to land good employment anywhere, they ought to know how to conduct themselves properly, and they ought to know how to communicate well and with courtesy. A lot of students are pretty good with it, and we all end up having a great time. But there a lot of students who aren't, unfortunately.
I'll have none of that "text speak" in any correspondence. I'll have no stranger trying to coerce overt familiarity with me by calling me "Tito Gerry". This isn't showbiz, and I'm not German Moreno.
Now I've written all this down in the web mail form, asking them to read the message carefully, hoping to prevent any problems.
Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I received some messages via the web form, doing exactly what I had asked them not to.
One wrote:
" elow ask ko lng kung tumtanggap b kau ng ojt for fine arts student..w8 ko poh ung reply..salamt poh"
Apparently, this student pretty much ignored all that I had written there, scrolled straight down and sent the message. I for one will *not* hire anyone who cannot spell and cannot write a proper letter. Now I sent a reply to this person, but it bounced back to me. Either he misspelled his email address, or it's someone trying to yank my chain.
But if it is a real person, I won't embarrass you by putting your name here. If you are reading this, I hope you learn something from this, and to answer your question, yes, I do get OJTs once in a while. I already have one now. But they need to be based in San Pablo, and they need to be someone I can get along with.
I got another email from an aspiring comic book artist, asking how to break into comics, and what are the things he needs to study.
Once again, it's someone who ignored the message in the web form completely and scrolled right down to send the message. If he had read what's written there, he would find a link to a rather long article that I wrote on how to break into comics (at least here in the Philippines), and what books he needs to read and study.
I can't stress how important it is for anyone who wishes to find employment to know how to follow instructions. If they can't do something as simple as that, well...
And those are only two. And I'll stop right there.
