By the time graduation nears and job hunting begins, students' resumés take on the status of the end-all, be-all representation of their time at the university.

While one cannot underestimate the value of having a remarkable resumé when looking for a job, many students overlook honesty and take sneaky steps to bolster them.

At Texas A&M, it is practically a tradition for students to sign up for extracurricular activities that would look good on a resumé without ever planning to really participate. Most clubs have minimum participation requirements to maintain membership.

While this encourages many students who are using the club as a resumé-filler to show up at least a couple times, there is nothing to stop those who do not fulfill the minimum requirements from putting the club on their resumé nonetheless.

Although signing up and then dropping out of after-class programs is an easy way to add lines to that all-important resumé, the practice is dwarfed in dishonesty next to the existence of national honor societies such as Golden Key and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

While having the grades to get admitted to these organizations is an accomplishment, the operations themselves are little more than empty names to put on resumés.

They usually require no minimum participation, (other than the entrance fee, of course) and are hardly heard of among campus organizations.

When was the last time anybody heard about the National Society of Collegiate Scholars putting on a guest-speaker forum or organizing a food drive for local shelters? The purpose of these honor societies is clear to all involved. Give them some money, and a student can officially add another meaningless accolade to his or her resumé.

However, there are several problems with students trying to fake their way through resumés.

First, when students who never participate in an organization can put that club on their resumé just as easily as those who actually do participate, it diminishes the efforts and accomplishments of the more deserving student.

	A resumé should be filled with hard-earned awards and justified memberships, not paid-for recognitions and empty promises.

The majority of students do take their memberships seriously and go to meetings, organize events and actively participate. These are the students who deserve the notation on their resumés.

Their resumés are cheapened by those who only care about paying their membership fees and putting the club's name on their own resumés.

Another drawback to this practice is its effect on a student's perception of work and rewards in the academic environment.

If a student can put a club or honor-society membership on his resumé without having to work for the group itself, what is to keep him or her from seeing this practice as "how things are done."

College is not supposed to be about finding loopholes and easy ways out. It is supposed to be a time of hard work learning to succeed.

The rewards for those efforts are an impressive resumé and a degree that actually means something. Joining clubs and honor societies without doing any real work for the group only teaches college students laziness and how to build a trophy shelf of awards and memberships without ever really trying.

Finally, when students list memberships to clubs and honor societies they did not do anything for, they are being dishonest to themselves and to prospective employers.

Graduating students' resumés are the sums of their accomplishments, not thrown-together lists of loopholes found and empty promises made.

It is incredibly simple to pay for memberships to organizations and then to never participate. It is even easier to join meaningless honor societies that almost seem to exist only on paper.

But students have to resist the urge to take these easy steps in resumé building. There are a huge number of on- and off-campus activities, and practically all students can find one or more that they would want to actively participate in.

This is the most honest and, in the long run, rewarding way to add achievements to a resumé.

If students do not want to put in the time and effort that goes along with these extracurricular activities, they should be honest to themselves and prospective employers by not joining them in the first place.

A resumé should be filled with hard-earned awards and justified memberships, not paid-for recognitions and empty promises.