Training for the Future

Searching for editing jobs was not as easy as I anticipated it being. Because editing jobs can encompass so much, I was surprised that there weren’t more local job openings for the position. However, I was able to find a couple of editing jobs; many of these jobs require some kind of experience in the field, or they were searching for someone with video editing skills, which I do not possess. While this is a little disheartening, I have learned many valuable skills through my internship with The Writers’ Slate and Professor Franklin. As Sherry Southard states in “Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture,” “students need skills that will enable them to participate successfully and to make decisions even more than they need such skills to work successfully within older organizations.” Professor Franklin routinely encourages his interns to make important decisions on the journal, which is a practice that I can apply to my future job. Although I am transitioning immediately from an undergraduate career to a graduate career, it is still important to have an understanding of the jobs that are on the market now, because it will give me an idea of what skills will need to be further honed in order to excel.

            The first two jobs I found were for multi-media journalist positions in Pittsburg with KOAM-TV and Manhattan with WIBW-TV. These jobs requires some kind of video editing skill. While I do not have any skills in video editing, it is something that I would be willing to learn. However, since it is a preferred skill for a new hire, I would have a disadvantage when compared to other candidates. This caused me to move on to the next job I could find.

            The second job I found was a technical writing position with Reynolds and Reynolds Company in Houston, Texas. Of all the jobs I found, this was the most attractive to me because they offer benefits that include medical, dental, vision, and health insurance; an opportunity to invest in a 401K; and paid holidays, vacations, and sick days. However, the salary listed was the only negative aspect. The job ad listed on the site was $35,000+ a year. According to Indeed.com, the average wage for technical writers in the Houston area is around $62,000 a year and the lower end of the range is approximately $40,000 a year. If I were to apply for this job, I would have to negotiate for a higher wage in order to meet the cost of living increase in moving from Pittsburg to Houston. While I kept this in mind, I moved on to the next ad.

            The next posting that I found was for a junior copywriting intern position with VSolvIt LLC. This is a web-based internship that pays $8.50 an hour. For this job, I would be “working on company newsletter, providing Quality Assurance (QA) on documents, spreadsheets, and webpages, interviewing other employees, and participation in weekly team meetings”. The minimum time commitment is 10 hours a week, which is practical for an internship position while in school. After reading this posting, I decided to apply for it in order to have a job this summer. After applying, I moved on to the next job listing.

            The final opening that I found was for an outreach intern position with Midwest Cancer Alliance - University of Kansas Cancer Center. This is a full-time paid job, but the pay is unspecified. Some of the duties that I feel as though I would excel at include creating marketing materials, generating emails for distribution, internet research, and general office duties. It also requires good customer service skills, which I would excel at because I worked at Dairy Queen for several years and was required to interact with people. However, since I’m applying for graduate school in Pittsburg, this internship was not as realistic as the one I applied for.

            Overall, there were several good opportunities available now in my chosen job field. However, many of them seemed to focus on video editing skills, and I do not have any experience with them. Despite this, I was able to find an internship that I applied for in order to have a job over the summer. I learned that, even though I’m afraid of the future, it does not hurt to look and discover what is being offered, because I could be using current opportunities to develop skills I could use in future careers. 

Southard, Sherry. "Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture."

Writing at Integrity Home Care and Hospice

          My position at Integrity is that of a Business Analyst / Professional Writer. I spend half my time writing documents, and the other half crunching numbers for the company. It’s a weird combination of responsibilities, but it provides me access to authority that I would not have had otherwise. As Katz discuses in her article A Newcomer Gains Power, “I will use Kanter’s definition of power, ‘the capacity to mobilize people and resources to get things done’ (1983, p.213). Authority can be taken to mean a source of power…” (421). I write a large volume of instructional manuals based on the processes that must be completed as a business analyst. Originally, I only wrote manuals for the three people in the business analytics department and any future business analysts. Now, however, my manuals caught the attention of the vice president of the company, and now I’m creating and rewriting manuals for an entire department. Many people read these, and I must conduct a certain sense of authority. It could be easy for these older professionals to disregard a 22 year old who hardly has his degree, but I have several higher corporate members backing my name. This support gives me authority, but I need to maintain a sense of power to encourage the readers of my manual to follow them correctly.

          I have honed my skill in writing technical documentation, and I’ve found myself enjoying it quite a lot. Even though this kind of writing can get repetitive, I find it enjoyable that these manuals are being distributed and used. That’s always a morale booster. I’ve used a lot of the writing skills I’ve developed over the years, mostly in using the appropriate language and document design. All training manuals need to have a level of consistency and branding with Integrity. Most manuals that are given to me to edit have inconsistent language with each other and no consistency as far as layout. My document design skills have greatly helped me fix these inconsistencies. I thought I would be doing more with my digital and web design skills, but there is really no need for me to cover that topic as well. I am a writer, and that’s why people reach out to me. There might be a chance to help design the websites or their intranet, but now is not the time.

          I didn’t figure that I would be spending so much time in Excel, but I do. When people think document design, they most often think about either an Adobe program or Microsoft Word, but an equal amount of design can go into an Excel document as well. The previous business analysts have trained me how to compile information and report on things, but I have been able to learn how to add my own style into these documents and design information tables in a way that provides easier access. Never underestimate how your skills might be able to help improve other functions. My skill in technical writing allowed me to redesign entire Excel sheets of numbers and data, which proves the importance of a varied skill-set.  

Genres in Technical/Professional Writing

          The time that I’m spending in Integrity is challenging me as a writer and opening my eyes a bit as an employee. Workplace writing is something that I’m dealing with, but, more often than not, my job boils down to a matter of uptake. As Bawarshi and Reiff say, “knowledge of uptake is knowledge of what to take up, how, and when, including how to execute uptakes strategically and when to resist expected uptakes” (86). I have been put forward, because of my experience writing as an intern, as the interim professional writer for both the IT Department and the Educational Development Department. This position is a struggle of uptake, since procedure before has always been for every department to handle their own writing, and some of them are quite proud at what they’ve written. Unfortunately, they don’t have the years of experience and training that I’ve had in writing professional documents, and all documents must have a sense of consistency.

          I’m doing my best to learn how to rewrite, redesign, and put forward these documents in a way that the original authors will uptake what I’ve written and not shut down. In the genre where I spend most of my time, which is technical manuals and instructional material, the language has to be a specific way in order to avoid failing as a genre. As Miller says, genres can fail by not having enough similarities across all the discourse, there may not be enough consideration of all the elements, and/or the genre has no real call to social action (Miller 163-4). My manuals are all calls to action, because my goal is to provide these manuals as a way of making certain processes easier and more accessible. Once these complicated procedures have become more accessible, my hope is that they will be done quicker and with fewer mistakes.

          I’m attempting to combat these problems by speaking from a place of authority. I’m learning to do these procedures by reading the authors’ original documents, and then tweaking them in a way that maintains the original meaning. I must avoid antagonism, or finding a permanent place with this company will be impossible. A lot of these authors in the IT and Educational Departments are older than myself, and so there is a barrier there when it comes to authority on language. I make my best efforts to remind them that this is my career, and I’ve spent years studying how to write for a particular genre. Teamwork must prevail, just as Miller says, “We learn to understand better the situations in which we find ourselves and the potentials for failure and success in acting together” (165).

Context in The Writers' Slate

The Writers’ Slate is an online journal that publishes narration, expository, and poetry pieces for students in grades K-12. As an intern for The Writers’ Slate, I work with Dr. Franklin, the publication’s volunteer editor. As the only intern, I act as a liaison between student writers and the Slate team, assistant editor, and journal designer. Although not required for this internship, it is expected that future interns share an interesting in reading and writing, as much of the beginning work for the Slate involves reading student work with Professor Franklin in order to choose submissions for publication.

Because most of this requires meeting one-on-one with Professor Franklin, interns must be able to successfully meet deadlines and communicate with Professor Franklin; much of the communication for this internship is via email, so candidates must be able to communicate effectively and professionally in an online atmosphere. Students must also be motivated to work toward a deadline and think creatively to overcome issues within the publication: not all students that are chosen for publication are receptive to online communication, so problem solving skills are essential to a candidate’s success.  Because technology is constantly evolving, making this online communication much more prevalent, future interns would benefit well from reading Linda Driskill’s article “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations.” As she states in her article, online communication relies heavily on the ability to adapt “:namely, that today’s ever-advancing technology and ever-expanding intercultural population calls for empathy, understanding, and adaptation when communicating.” It is becoming increasingly more common for student interns to interact with students from across the globe—we’ve had submissions from China, Brazil, and India this year alone. In this internship, interns must pay close attention to context.

Context in The Writers’ Slate internship communication is extremely important. Because we communicate with a wide variety of people—the Slate director, Professor Franklin, students, and our web mistress—we must keep in mind that our context depends on the person with whom we are communicating. According to Driskell, “Context can help explain what a document means, what ideas it contains, why the writer would try to express his or her ideas in a particular way, and why readers who occupy particular roles in different parts of an organization would be likely to respond to a document in particular ways” (59). As such, we as interns should tailor our method of communication depending on who we are talking to. Although we need to maintain and air of professionalism, we must also be able to communicate with students in a way that they will understand, which is much different than our communication with both Professor Franklin and Dr. Bushman.

                Similarly, our hierarchy is simple, and we work closely with Professor Franklin. Although similar to the assignments that we complete in class, we also have the additional task of balancing formality with our superiors. It is often easy to slip into a too-comfortable feeling when working with them, because interns seek advice and input from our supervisor. However, it is important to also remember that our supervisor is not just our supervisor for the project, but also a professor and professional in the department. As such, Professor Franklin is afforded a certain level of respect that interns must provide him. Developing professional communication in the internship with the Slate is also good practice for the future; careers will always require workers to be able to communicate professionally, effectively, and efficiently, which the Slate gives interns the opportunity to do.

                The only skills that I expected to use that I didn’t were web design. I thought that I would also be in charge of placing the Slate online, but we have a web mistress who does that for us. I also thought I would use more aspects of document design. While I did use some in this internship, I did not really start exercising it until the spring contest edition, because all the other editions followed a template. Once I was able to begin designing my edition, I was able to work on skills that I was not comfortable using before, like creating vector images in Adobe Illustrator.

Sources

Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations.”

Genres in Technical/Professional Writing

When I began my career as a technical/professional writer, I didn’t think a typical technical/professional writing position would involve much creative work; that is, I assumed it would be mostly cut and dried manual writing. However, my internship with The Writers’ Slate has challenged that assumption, and I believe that has been beneficial for me. Outside of email correspondence with students who are being published and my supervisor, I do not write large chunks of text, nor do I create documents that scrutinized for their readability and accessibility; my primary job is to take the students’ work from the submission and transfer it into an online document that is easily accessible and not overly cluttered. Despite this, I use Millers’ genre of email writing quite often as it is my main form of correspondence; I also use a stylesheet, which relates to Barwashi and Reiff’s idea of a workplace genre because it is tailored specifically toward a person who knows how to manipulate the program it is used for.

The most important task for interns with The Writers’ Slate is correspondence with students who are being published and our supervisor. Because the students often forget certain bits of information that are required for publication (grade level, school location, etc.), I often have to reach out to those students in order to obtain that information. However, because I am working for an organization, it is essential that I follow a certain protocol when emailing them; this is where the typified rhetorical actions of emailing are important. In my experience, students often respond quickly and professionally when I email them asking for more information. I believe this is because of the level of professionalism that is established through the emails, especially because of the letterhead template a previous intern crafted. This letterhead creates a sense of importance and impresses upon the student that their work is important enough to receive an official acceptance letter or request for more information. If this information was asked for or sent via a plain email, it might not be as well-received.

As a result, a workplace genre is created; interns are able to view the style sheet, letterhead, and PDFs of previous editions of the Slate in order to create consistency and professionalism. Stylesheets are inherently workplace focused; a person must have knowledge of the project the stylesheet is written for, how to use the program it is necessary for, and how to use the information in the stylesheet to create a document that is recognized as being related to previously published documents. However, these impress the fluidity of the medium; because software is always developing, stylesheets can be updated to include information that is helpful in using new technology or implement new techniques, which creates a sense of constant change. According to Bawarshi and Reiff,

genres are dynamic because as their conditions change – for example because of changes in material conditions, changes in community membership, changes in technology, changes in disciplinary purposes, and values… -- genres must change along with them or risk becoming obsolete.

The Writers’ Slate is a good example of change in technical/professional writing. Since the first intern, Mr. Alex Shepard, took on creating the Slate, it has been allowed to evolve and adapt to each intern’s personal style; this is obvious in the contest edition. The last issue of the school year, the contest edition is the one in which interns are free to exercise their creative control. With our supervisor’s permission, we are able to add color, images, and change the layout of the publication as we see fit. Since it has become published via an online medium, this has changed the Slate immensely; it has the ability to add color images or imbed hyperlinks, a capability that is excluded from print publication. Throughout its lifespan with interns from Pittsburg State, The Writers’ Slate embodies the concept of change in order to avoid becoming obsolete.              

                Becoming familiar with technology and seeing first-hand how it can change a publication is essential for any technical/professional writer. Fortunately, my internship with The Writers’ Slate has prepared me for this and even encouraged my own changes to the journal as time has passed. It is also a lesson for technical/professional writers; exploring different genres and mediums in order to evolve is encouraged for our profession. Without the knowledge that I have gained in this internship, I feel as though I would be vastly underprepared in a future career, because it is entirely different to learn about change in a genre and having to actually implement and manipulate change yourself.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis, and Mary Jo Reiff. "Rhetorical Genre Studies" and "Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts."

Miller, Carolyn. "Genre as Social Action."

Defining Technical/Professional Writing

          A person from almost any field of academia could obtain a degree in professional writing, and finding a definition for a field with this amount of flexibility can prove to be a challenge. Many argue over the semantics and inflection of the term technical writing, with some focusing on the technical aspects while others focus more towards writing. As Jo Allen says, "...We cannot seem to agree on the parameters of the discipline" (70). I would argue that you cannot view these two parts of the term separately, but instead need to analyze them together. If you only analyze a single term, you are losing a great deal of context that makes the field of technical writing so dense for those who jump into it. Yes, you could choose to view the field as a specific and restricted form of writing, or as a technological form of writing, but this blanket statement takes away from the strengths of the field: cooperation.
          The field of technical writing the melding of two separate disciplines, one involving technology and the other involving humans. The technical aspects allows humans to go beyond simple literary and physical analysis, but the technology would be pointless without the human element of writing. As Carolyn Miller said in regards to Aristotle's notions that science is beyond human intentions and emotions: "The most uncomfortable aspect of this non-rhetorical view of science is that it is a form of intellectual coercion: it invites us to prostrate ourselves at the windowpane of language and accept what Science has demonstrated" (18). Science and technology do play large roles in the technical writing field, but classifying technical writing as exclusively technology, as per David Dobrin, is undercutting the limits of human knowledge and understanding. On the reverse, however, simply having humans write would not classify a piece of technical writing. This bare necessity would more than likely just classify as writing, or possibly literature. Technology gives extra tools to those who choose to write technically, and human imagination and emotion gives shape to this cold technology while putting forward information in a context where it can be understood by a mass audience.
          My internship with Integrity Home Care and Hospice provides a unique perspective into this notion of balance between the technical and the biological. To put it bluntly, a computer with the right programs and processing power could do the entirety of my job. I take numbers from one system, combine them with numbers of another system, and then put forward the final results into a sheet that will be sent up the chain to people with more power than myself. However, a computer that would be capable of this feat would not be able to understand what it's doing. I understand that my information is being translated to be interpreted, and as such I can manipulate formatting, add images, and otherwise follow common elements of style in order to present the information to people who can then understand it and spread it. A computer would simply layout the information as cleanly as possible in several rows of 0s and 1s, and a human by themselves wouldn't be able to handle this level of information on such a large scale or on such a short time frame. Beyond moving and presenting data, I also write instructional materials on these processes. These manuals are designed for those with no knowledge of the processes, and are geared for those who will follow me in my position so that I don't have to physically train them. Computers do not have this awareness, and certainly couldn't create a training manual geared towards an audience. It's a weird symbiotic relationship between man and technology that makes technical writing unique, and that is why people from both a technological and a humanities background can succeed as professional and technical writers.

Defining Technical/Professional Writing

          Defining technical/professional writing is not an easy task, as demonstrated by the countless arguments that have resulted in several definitions. From narrow to broad, there is no single term that can pin down what exactly technical/professional writing can mean. Davin Dobrin defines technical writing as “writing that accommodates technology to the user,” but fails to note that not all technical writing requires technology—if it did, we would not have countless historical documents that existed long before modern technology. He also states that “technical writing is writing about a subject in the pure sciences or the applied science in which the writer informs the reader through an objective presentation of facts.” However, because my internship deals strictly with the publication of fiction works, it is difficult to apply that definition to it as well. In fact, I believe that while technical/professional writing does include some part of those definitions, it also limits the definition. Rather, I feel that a quote by Carolyn Miller in What’s Practical About Technical Writing provides the field with a definition that provides it the flexibility that it needs. She says, “Technical writing, the rhetoric of the world of work.” I believe this works the best because every profession needs the ability to communicate concisely, objectively, and professionally—a skill necessary to every profession.

          Because technical/professional writers possess a myriad of skills, they are invaluable in the workplace. From manual writing, to copyediting, to grant writing, technical/professional writers can adjust to nearly any work demands and produce results that the business needs. My internship with The Writers’ Slate can serve as an example of this. As assistant editor, I play many roles in the publication of each edition. First and foremost, I work with Professor Franklin on the fall and winter editions to choose works for publication. In this role, I act almost like a publisher to choose works that are best suited for our journal. After this, I shift toward a more secretarial role; I draft acceptance and conditional acceptance letters to send out to students whose work we have chosen. The step where my technical skills come more into play is the actual crafting of the journal. In order to craft it, I have to format, edit, and compile all the documents from students into the page layout software InDesign. While this is a typical skill for professional writers to possess, it is one of the least-involved parts of the internship and perhaps the easiest, because I only work with the technology at that point—there is no need to interact with students in order to ensure all the work is there.

          My overarching point is that it is important not to discount a humanities degree because all of these roles come together and function because of my experience in the humanities department. Most importantly, having this degree in the English department is important because I have to maintain an understanding of the English language—from grammar to punctuation rules—in order to effectively do my job. I also am familiar with research as an English major and have been able to research more effective tactics for implementing technology into the journal. Although other disciplines might be familiar with research as well, it provides professional writers a distinct advantage when coupled with an intimate knowledge of the language. Most importantly, being in the humanities department has been extremely advantageous for me as a Writers’ Slate intern because I have been able to more effectively choose good submissions from students, which has afforded me the opportunity to discuss and debate with Professor Franklin. Without this, I would not have been able to learn as much as I have from the internship.

Sources:

Dobrin, David "What's Practical About Technical Writing?"

Miller, Carolyn R. “What's Practical About Technical Writing?"