Cleaning House

With the release of Facebook's Graph Search comes the inspiration to raid my own photos, posts, and notes and delete anything that I feel is too embarrassing, mildly unflattering, giving away too much info, or a combination of all three.

In recent years, I've been posting less and less photos as time goes on. I stick to my one or two favored profile photos, change up my cover photo every now and then, and really only upload many photos during milestone events and occasions. I've also been a lot better about keeping professors, family, and potential employers in mind when posting.

But because I was 16 once, I have some pretty stupid and embarrassing photos and posts smattering Facebook (and the rest of the WWW). When I scroll through my albums and get to these postings, I always hesitate before I hit the delete button.

How would an employer who is considering me seriously enough to snoop through my Facebook page view me?

Would they consider the fact that many of my pictures are me in costume for a play, or being active at another extracurricular - showing that I like to get involved during my free time? Or would they see me in those photos, dolled up in too much make-up, and think I look like a nightly street-walker?

Would they see the pictures of me just being silly with people and assume there had to be alcohol or drugs involved? Or that I don't take things seriously?

Would they notice my consistent general lack of selfies and beer pong poses throughout the years?

Would they see the few pictures of me with a beer at the table (like my pictures from Germany, where a beer at the table is required) and think I party too much?

Most importantly, would they see that I've grown? ("Grown" as in evolved, of course, because we can all clearly see that I haven't grown an inch since the 5th grade.) I'd like to think they would.

One of the few really nice things about Timeline is that all of one's pictures can now easily be viewed in chronological order: Scroll down to the beginning, and work your way back up. This way, I think it's easy enough to see how one has started since their time on Facebook, and how they've changed (hopefully for the better).

With that said, I'm really hoping employers are looking at my Facebook and seeing the too fuzzy or too crunchy hair (I just could not find a happy medium) and the raccoon eyeliner with the funny friends and the silly poses, and then taking the time to scroll up. The friends are still funny and the poses still silly, but my viewpoints have changed (for the better, I think), and that is reflected in both my photos and posts.