Job Title
I am working as the assistant editor of the CEA Forum. I
work closely with Dr. McDaniel who is my supervisor as well as the editor of
the CEA Forum.
Responsibilities
I have had varying responsibilities throughout this
internship, including designing and creating a promotional flyer, correcting
website typos and errors, designing a workflow document for future interns to
reference, learning how to navigate and use the CMS for the forum, as well as
editing article submissions, communicating with authors, and applying a
template to articles as well as checking the format against the style sheet.
Qualifications
Some qualifications for this job would include:
- · Upper-level classman in the technical writing emphasis
- · Completing of Technical/Professional Writing
- · Completion of Document Design
- · Completion of Technical/Professional Editing
- · Familiarity with Microsoft word, especially using review feature
- · Basic knowledge of InDesign or similar graphic design software
- · Previous experience with content management systems
New Skill Acquisition
The majority of abilities and skills I have needed during
this internship are ones that I feel I have already learned in the classroom;
for instance, skills needed to design and create a flyer incorporated knowledge
from my previous learning and experiences in classes like document design and
page layout software. Knowledge required to make an effective workflow document
applies skills learned in my technical/professional writing, advanced technical/professional
writing, editing, and document design classes. I was actually quite happy and
surprised by how much my classes had helped to prepare me for a “real world”
scenario. I had expected that much like Anson and Forsberg wrote I would be one
of the students who went from my experience in the classroom to a position in
an organization or company where the expectations would not line up with those
of the academic world. It seems that this is a popular fear and warning that I
hear, that even though going to school and getting our degrees is supposed to
prepare us for a job in the corporate world what we are taught and what is
expected from a company are two different things. I was happy that in my case
they are not all that different, what makes a good document for a class project
still makes a good document in a real world application of those skills.
Abilities and Skills I Expected
to Use
I thought that I would use more graphic design skills in
this internship, but they were very minimal. I also thought that I may need to
work with social media but was unsure if that would be part of my
responsibilities or not. The only thing close to social media I dealt with was
the website itself. Other than those two things I feel that my expectations of
needed skills was mostly accurate.
Writing Context, Work Atmosphere,
Organizational Hierarchy
This internship experience was mostly informal; because the
meetings with my supervisor were one-on-one and we worked through what each of
my assignments was as they came up there was very good communication and I felt
that I had a clear understanding of what was expected in my work. The writing
context was still professional in most of my documents, perhaps with the exception
of the workflow document, which had a very informal tone to the writing.
Works Consulted
Anson, Chrisand Lee Forsberg. “Moving Beyond the Academic
Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”
Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Contexts in
Organizations”
Katz, Susan. “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the
Role of Rhetorical Expertise”
