TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Seeking advice on English MA From:Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 20 Apr 2001 10:13:12 -0700
Christine -dot- Anameier -at- seagate -dot- com wrote:
> I have to disagree with this on two points:
> (1) A master's thesis is a completely different animal from the kind of
> writing I do today. If I write an excellent 25, 50, 100-page essay on
> subversion of hegemony in the lesser-known works of Cuthbert Queeg, that
> doesn't mean I can write a good six-step procedure on how to modify a
> database record.
A gentle disagreement: no type of writing is completely different from
any other type.
Although the style of a thesis is very different from that of the
average manual, completing a thesis does show that a person can organize
large amounts of information and has the discipline to complete a long
task. These abilities are useful in any type of writing, and not many
wannabe writers have them.
In addition, completing a large, complex piece of original work gives
writers some justified confidence in themselves. For example, before I
wrote my thesis, I'd done poems, stories, and articles, but never
something that took two years to research and write, and weighed in at
250 pages. Secretly, I had always worried that maybe I was a dabbler.
However, once I did the thesis - even before my defence - those worries
dropped away. Ever since, my first reaction to a new piece of writing
hasn't been to worry about my adequacy, but to start figuring how to
organize it.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- progeny -dot- com
"Rose bouquet, wedding band,
Their recipe for romance might have come out of a can."
- The Mollies, "I Don't Wanna Go to Bed"
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
