Teachable Moment - Careers, Lives & the "Big" Decisions

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about careers and how people make a living. As I mentioned before, I'm teaching a few sections of a professional writing course, and this particular course always makes me think about "what else" I should be teaching. I'm not just showing them how to write memos and emails, this class is about making a series of important professional decisions. The first decision is to take the course and improve their writing skills...good choice, I'd say. The second is a unit where we deal with application packets. Let's apply for real jobs, or at least see how close we can get to a decent application.

What I sometimes have to say is "Don't just pick the job you think you have to apply for." What I really want to say is "Imagine yourself at this job for 5 years. Do you think you will like an 8-5 in a cubicle? Do you like the prospect of paying off student loans on 'commission only'? Will this allow you to do all the things you've been doing in college that you love, like hiking or sports or traveling?"

Nobody asked me those questions in college. Nobody even really implied that, hey, one day you'll HAVE TO GET A REAL JOB! How can this be?!? I'd say it was a bit of good karma from my end...so a brief synopsis for those who may not already know...

Luckily, I followed the "traditional professional path" of a literature major / creative writer and went to graduate school. Luckily, I was awarded a teaching associateship. Luckily, I loved teaching. Luckily, I was hired by the same university from which I graduated (i.e. I worked the network and had minimal "application requirements"). Luckily, (after a brief stint in direct mail marketing) I came back a second time to the same university at a higher pay rate and more stability. Luckily, I survived a horrendous economic tsunami that rendered many of my former colleagues job-less and benefit-less. MOST luckily, I still love my job.

I still have a hard time dealing with the fact that I, anal-retentive super-planner me, just went with the flow. Only when I went back to teaching a second time was I truly choosing my career path in all honesty. Why, do you ask? Because I hated working 40 hour weeks in an office. I didn't like being told when to come in and when to leave. I didn't like having to take a full hour for lunch. I didn't like not being allowed to work 40 hours in 4 days to get a three-day weekend every once in a while. I didn't like having to constantly "team-build" during meetings and forced social outings. I didn't like being stuck in job where I was paid, and valued, based on my "direct experience" and not on my "life experience."

Teaching was my out. It was also my passion. It also was flexible enough to make me feel like a whole person every single day. What does that mean? It means I can keep house, walk the dogs, run errands, cook a homemade dinner, spend quality time with my husband, AND make a contribution to the life of a developing writer/professional EACH AND EVERY DAY, all in one day. It's as close to making everyone happy all the time that you can get. I love my life, my students love my teaching (mostly, ha) and accessibility nearly every day of the week, and ultimately the department loves that students write great things about me on course evaluations. Win-Win-Win.

So what can I do to help these fledgling professionals? Reiterate that a career is something you will commute to, sit though, and actually do work for every day, hopefully, for the rest of your life (with some advancement and changes of course); it's a package deal, though, a career...so it's not just about the dream job on paper, it's about the type of work that fits your life, the one you had, well, long before you ever put your nose to the proverbial grindstone.


Where did all this come from? A funny little article the hubby sent, about "overrated industries." For the record, #1 is a dream we dream together, though we're both too rational to ever jump in (knock on wood!)

Teachable Moment - Business Memos

And I thought I knew just about everything, j/k...

I'm teaching 3 sections of a professional writing course this semester, and, as always, the first assignment proves to be a bit of a challenge for my students, i.e. omg wtf do you want me to do?!?

The Assignment: Write a memo evaluating a sales message for effective communication.

The Question: "I don't have my book yet, so I what is 'memo format'?"

The Answer: I'll just google "memo format" and get something easy as a proxy.

The Complication: This article, which I desperately want to share, but seriously, not as the very first thing I show an assignment-overwhelmed student. HA!

The article provides a cogent, near-academic (but somehow SO NOT academic) approach to the science of visual rhetoric, document production, and the ills of worshipping at the altar of Word Defaults. The writer is truly taking the audience-centric "You" attitude I preach, and is considering (on a tab and space and leading level) how we actually SEE a memo and the DECODE that information more or less quickly. It's brilliant, and frightening, and, well, the kind of stuff that just gives me the willies.

I have never so seriously considered my entire writing life with a healthy dose of oh-god-did-I make-the-Example-3-mistake!?! dismay. In some ways it is an epiphany and a radical departure from everything I've ever thought to consider about the banality of business document composition. In other ways, it's the kind of tedious, nit-pickingy type of thing students despise instructors for expecting. Thus the perils of the academy and its academicians perched precariously on the edge of obsessive attention to curricular detail (we so desperately want to teach everything, really, even the crazy, tiny stuff like this).

I'm thinking now that this blog might just be the best thing going for my teaching. I can obsess and digress, they can inquire and be inspired, and we can carry on these fabulous discussions without the formality of the classroom, or the stingy "allotments" of the classroom.

If only I can get them all to read it...at least a little...without me.