Excuses like “I thought I had it” or “the dog ate my homework” will not work in the real world. Or will they?

“The Dog Ate My Resume” is a book published last year by father and son duo Zack and Larry Arnstein. In 186 pages and 52 chapters, the duo covers everything from finding and cornering your academic advisor to a lengthy description of a career in the AmeriCorps.

The book is split into five small sections including, “Plundering the Resources at Your College,” “Choosing a Career by Process of Elimination” and “Choosing a Real Job on the Basis of What You Can Actually Get.”

It also comes with a mid-term exam halfway through the book and a final exam at the end. These exams consist of six multiple choice questions including, “What better way could you have spent the $11.95 you spent on this book?” and “Why is the field of medicine not covered in this book?”

The latter question has answers to choose from such as, “The doctor is unavailable to answer this question. You will have to ask one of the other doctors” followed by “Who are also not available to answer this question.”

It also contains an (groan) essay question section.

“The Dog Ate My Resume” starts off on a positive note, the introduction. While most people skip the introduction to books they read because they are too long, this introduction is less than a page. The authors point out that the great part about this introduction is that you get credit for reading it.

It starts off with the sentence ,”Of all the many bad things about introductions, the worst is that the pages don’t even count!” Zack and Larry continue to explain that you could read a 20-to-30-page introduction but it might not count because it’s labeled “iv” or “vii.”

In this book, the reader gets credit not only for reading the intro, but the table of contents, the title page and the copyright page.

The first section is about what you can do in college to prepare yourself for the real world. It offers extremely helpful advice, like what amazing career you can look forward to with your current major.

For example, if you are an English literature major, you could become a house sitter. Or if you are a psychology major, you could become a fortune teller.

It also states that this is just a rough guideline and that if you major in psychology, there’s no reason you cannot aspire to be a house sitter or waitress. These careers are more closely associated with other majors.

Section three of the book is about choosing your career. It details various careers and lets you know what you can look forward to in that particular career choice. In each career section, there are pros and cons about each job choice. A con about being in law enforcement is that you have to read people their constitutional amendments, but a pro is that you don’t really have to anymore.

I would spend a lot more time and space telling you about this book and how great it is but it seems I am running out of both. If you take anything from this article it should be that this book is worth the $11.95. Although it doesn’t offer much “real” advice for what to do after college, if does provide 30 minutes or so of procrastination before seniors really do have to enter the real world.

And as any undergraduate will tell you, procrastination is not something you do; it’s a way of life.