Jake's Technical Writing Blog

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“Adulting”

Hello all,

We just recently started talking about cover letters and resumes. I have written a resume before, but I have never written a cover letter. I do understand the purpose of a resume in the sense that it is used to scan a large number of candidates in a short amount of time. It is used to show off somebody’s skills, experiences, education, achievements, etc… in a professional and subtle manner to a potential employer in hopes for an interview. As in terms of the cover letter, I understand that it is a way to summarize your resume, introduce yourself, and show some sincerity to your future employer. Having never written a cover letter before, this definitely going to be outside of my comfort range. Thankfully for me, I think I will have a very strong foundation built for my ability to write cover letters and resumes soon enough.

Earlier today, I was at a career event presentation that was put on by the EGGS (Environmental, Geographical, and Geological Science) department. They were offering job openings in all of their offices that are spread out across Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Since I am currently a sophomore in college, I was simply there to learn more about the field and do some networking. If I were to be a senior right now, I could have given them a cover letter and resume and hoped for a call. I think it is quite a disadvantage that if I never took a class like the one I am in, I would have a resume and cover letter that would be predisposed to making employers want to walk the other way because of its potential ineffectiveness. I take this matter very seriously because there is a great deal of information that I want to express to a potential employer like my work ethic among a list of other qualities.

Among all that has already happened today, one of my closest friends told me that he is about to make the biggest decision of his life so far. My friend, Eli is very close to signing on the dotted line to start financing a house. He wants to rent out one half of the house out to two tenants and the other side would be for one of my other friends named Cole who signed the lease with him. Eli lives very close to Bloomsburg and plans to keep commuting to keep costs down while Cole and I are going to live in the house. Both of my friends want to put whatever money they can into real estate investing because they both have taken enough classes and done enough research to maximize reaping the benefits of real estate investing. Eli is double majoring in business administration and political science while Cole is majoring in global business. I am very happy that they are more informed about this whole field than I am because I am not. With all of this being said, one of the things that Eli and Cole have done for a while now is read and learn to break down to understand the fine print on a legal document. They have both informed me about the basic logistics of leases. From what I understand, knowing how to read tediously and technically written leases, contracts, and other legal documents is a useful quality to have. It can be just one word that can change the entire interpretation of the lease. At the end of this class I do not expect to go through a lease that is ten times longer than that of this short blog, but I do hope that I will at least be somewhat more aware of very technically written documents like that of a lease. With all of these events happening, it makes me want to think about the future because I think it is hard to not to. The “adulting” that I think that many college students refer and joke about is a very serious matter. It should not be taken lightly because the odds are that everything will come all at once for many of us, and we all should be prepared for them should they happen.

Individualized Education

When I first logged onto this course in BOLT, I was really surprised to hear that we would be writing blogs regularly. I could not understand why we would be blogging in a technical writing course, because I spent most of my time in high school and even some of college getting assignments that had so many directions to follow. I was questioning what an assignment with only a general direction is meant to accomplish. I have had a class or two that had assignments like this one before, and I never thought too much about their purpose. After some time, I concluded that these open assignments are designed so that we college students can take our education down the exact path that we want to take. Additionally, ever since I enrolled in this course, I could not help thinking about how I will have to write technically at a future job. How will I know that I am writing correctly?

By studying, reading, or in this case writing what we want to write about within reason gives us free range to explore a topic that we want to talk about. We are already emotionally invested in the topic if we want to talk about it, and the odds are that this will make us much more likely to just go out of our way to research the topic when it may not even be required. This method of learning can most likely be applied to just about any assignment. I thought to myself about the amount of learning that could be driven to possibly spark a new interest just by reading or writing about what I want to. The more that I was forced to use this method for approaching assignments, the more likely that I found myself learning things that other people around me did not learn about as much. As time went on, I saw first-hand that my college education was becoming personalized.

At this point in my education, it is hard for me to sit down and not think about how the studying and assignments that I do today will help me down the road in a couple of years. When I think about technical writing, all I can think about is writing reports for different soils, rocks, and situations out in the field. I do worry about messing up because I feel like it is easy to do, and I really do not want to mess up in front of an employer who is not forgiving. The worst thing I can imagine is my future employer thinking that I am incompetent because of a mistake that I made. I think that the people that I am surrounded by will ultimately be the most important for this situation. My friends and family constantly tell me about how smart that they think I am. When I exit this course, I hope that I will see that my writing skills will be improved enough for me to believe my friends and family. I am hoping that by the end of my college career, I will have retained most of the knowledge that was being thrown at me so that if I do make a mistake, it will hopefully be a mistake that is insignificant. What if the mistake I make is significant, but it is not an academic mistake but an audience mistake?

This past weekend I found out from first-hand experience that knowing your audience is crucial. I am not 21 yet, but I found myself having a small drinking party this past weekend. I was very distracted from the majority of the people that were at the party for most of the night because I had a friend who kept pulling me aside to have conversations by ourselves. It is safe to assume that I did not hear about a large majority of the conversations that happened outside of the ones my friend and I had because of this. Two of my friends were drunk to the point where they were making comments to some of the girls that were at my apartment that were not even close to being acceptable. The next morning, I felt awful about this taking place at my apartment and especially since I did not even know until the next morning. I knew that I had to confront my friends, but I knew it wouldn’t be affective at all if the conversation turned into an interrogation. I had to present an extremely sensitive subject in a way that would not offend my audience or in this case, my friends. I feel like this could happen to me in the future because there could be environmental or geological hazards that a client does not want to hear anything about. As a geologist, I would be obligated to bring up the topic because of the harmful hazard. In this situation, I would need to present the problem in such a way that the client does not get offended but also will take immediate action.

One of the biggest things that I came to realize in just writing this assignment is that curiosity about the point in education, acquired knowledge in education, and learning how to address the audience while still becoming competent about what I am studying. Deep down, I think that people do want to help to better the environment, but they cannot be scolded for not knowing what to do. As a geologist, it will be my job to determine how we can encourage people to take action in such a task. Thank you for reading and have a good night.

Jacob

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

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You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
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If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

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