- Brief Introduction
- Beginning of Class Writing Assignment
- Click on the title of this blog post, “Week 13,” scroll down to the comment area, and write at least 250 words in response to this week’s readings. You can summarize the readings, you can relate the readings to your own experience or something else you have read or learned about, etc. Any writing of 250 words or more that are related to the readings are fair game for this weekly assignment at the beginning of class.
- Post your comment after 15 minutes even if you don’t reach the 250 word minimum threshold.
- Why we are doing this: It helps you organize your thoughts before discussion and it gives you regular writing practice.
- Discuss the readings assigned for Week 13.
- Discuss internships
- How are they going?
- Discuss the Professional Portfolio
- Include at least 10 deliverables (can be from internship, classwork, or your own initiative)
- Each deliverable needs an accompanying reflection of at least 250 words that describes the document’s purpose and context, your rhetorical strategy, and your methodology of creating it (i.e., workflow).
- In the coming classes, I will demo two different ways to create your portfolio so that it is public facing and easily linkable on your resume, LinkedIn Profile, etc.:
- Google Docs with a sharable link (an example)
- OpenLab/Wordpress website (an example)
- See previous announcement post for links to more examples.
- Weekly Log
- Remember to add an entry to your logbook for each week until the end of the semester and keep all of your logs in a single file (Google Doc, Word docx, OpenOffice odf, etc.). Include the first date of a given week for each entry at the top of the page. Write at least 250 words about your current or past experience as appropriate. For example, if you are currently in an internship, your logs should record your experiences, thoughts, challenges, solutions, etc. that you find significant each week. Or, if you have completed your internship, your logs can be about experiences, projects, interactions with people in the workplace, challenges, solutions, etc. based on your past experience. And, if you are continuing in a new internship for additional experience, you can write about that, too. The point is to write at least 250 words per entry with one entry per week about your experience in the internship.
- Why we are doing this: It helps you articulate your work experience so that you may better reflect on, consider, remember, and act on those experiences as you transition into the workplace. Additionally, it gives you extra writing practice, which research shows will automatically improve your writing ability.
- Review readings and homework for next week.
- Look through your course work and internship work for examples of your writing to include in your professional portfolio. This can include deliverables that you wrote by yourself and as part of a team. Have at least 5 on hand for next week’s class when we will work on the reflections for these deliverables during class.
Something interesting I learned from the first reading on undistributing work through writing is the process that technical writers use to create their documents. It mentions how technical writers copy paste a lot of their content and they reuse a lot of text rather than create original text. This process requires technical writers to seamlessly weave in a body of information in a way that makes it easy to read and understand. I learned that the work distribution at times causes lack of authority and actual expertise in a field, this causes problems with work completion and the quality of the work.
This article relates to me as a technical writing student interning in the writing center. There is a lot of back and forth between me, and the team on documents and content that we are producing. It usually starts off with distributing work between us, and then producing drafts. After creating the draft, I usually email or ask the team questions and we go forth from their to create the final document.
The first article was about how technical writers manage text in complex information environments. There are two practices that can be performed by distributing the labor, texts and technologies are technological skills and rhetoric skill. Having conditions to distribute work can help create new and complex challenges. A term, symbolic-analytic was used to describe the ability to identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract and broker information. It is crucial to have different roles that you can diversify yourself in. In order to achieve a comprehensive reconceptualization patterns and analyzing the organization is needed.
The Research Methodology section contained information on how the contracted workers had little direct subject matter experience for the products and this differed from the subject matter experts.
Communication should also have information that can be put in the document. It also states that in today’s digital age we can have short documents into small pieces of information. Richard Harper’s student analyzes how the documents control the workflow in various divisions. The distribution of work across time, space, organizations, and individual experts should come together and be weaved into a singular documentation.
Work distribution can help enhance the outcome being produced.
In my internship I have been able to create documents that were my own but also passed down from other people who have worked on it. It feels as though everyone has a different voice or different focus on what they want to be heard. It takes time and understanding of what the writer may have meant to say to get that seamless transitioning in place.
The article “Undistributing Work Through Writing: How Technical Writers Manage Texts in Complex Information Environments” talks about how skills are used for making documentation and what skills are used by various people involved in the process of creation. There are individual technical writers and other people with skills or knowledge that all help in the process of creation. Besides technical writers there are symbolic-analytic workers who identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and broker information with their principal work materials being information and symbols. They “frequently work online, either communicating with peers … or manipulating symbols with the help of various computer resources”. Many people collaborate to create a piece.
The article “Your Office Is More Annoying Than You Remembered. Here’s How to Handle It.” Gives you tips and information on how to deal with office problems and especially people. After working from home where it is peaceful, quiet, and convenient, returning to the office can make you feel unhappy and stressed. There is The Loud Talker, The Gossip, The Nosy Cubicle Mate, The Boring Storyteller, The Chronic Interrupter, and The Tuna Melt Reheater. The Loud Talker is loud and chatty. You should follow the “S.E.C.” rule: smile, maintain eye contact and remain calm. You should politely tell them that they are too loud. With The Gossip you should politely tell them that you don’t want to be part of the gossip and ask them to exclude you from gossiping with them. With The Nosy Cubicle Mate you should tell them you don’t want to answer or talk about it or give one word answers until they get the hint. “With nosy people, it’s really about being as quiet as you can and not taking the bait and not engaging.” With The Boring Storyteller you should steer the conversation into the direction you want and if you are looking for information wrap it up. “Tell your colleague you must get to your next appointment. Body cues are effective, too, like standing up or walking out of the room with the person.” With The Chronic Interrupter you should tell them to have all their questions for a check-in that you schedule. You need to let people know they have access to you. They shouldn’t always be bothering you and should instead use your and their time wisely. If they really need something then they should bother you and ask but just not ask all the time. With The Tuna Melt Reheater, you should talk to management and exercise tolerance. “One of the takeaways of the pandemic is that communities survive better than individuals. As we all return to the workplace…we have two choices. “One way is to disconnect as soon as possible with all that has happened and get back to your life,” he said. “The other is to embrace the pandemic as a great teacher.” By bringing what we’ve learned about solidarity, compassion and what really matters back to the office, he said, “you can let these teachings transform you into a better human being.”