Today’s Plan:
- Questions
- Coding
- Homework
Questions
So many good questions!
What would be your advice for an English Major trying to get a job? What can we do to raise our chances when we leave college and start looking for jobs?
I was wondering if there is any outstanding work a student has done that stuck with you?
For sure. I think I mentioned the grant writing project that secured 300 Build a Bears for Santa Cops of Weld County. That was awesome. In Spring 2020, we worked with the Holocaust Memorial Observances group, and developed a grant writing project around Volavkona’s I Never Saw Another Butterfly. That became the foundation of Rand Hook’s internship with the organization the next year. When we worked with the Rock Found, a reentry and rehabilitation organization, Mikal Kheil did amazing research leading a team that identified peer organizations and mining their social media feeds for content ideas.
Something I would like to know more about is what internships are like. I’ve seen them in movies and typically you have the “coffee kid” but I want to know what they are really like.
So, despite the generalization that internships are sketchy, my experience has been almost universally positive. Generally, students locate an internship opportunity via Linkedin (etc) and I work with them to submit the ENG 490 internship paperwork.
Thinking of a few internships the past few years:
- Molly Riggs, music blog writer at Audible Addiction
- Carl McDonald, grant writing internship with Impact Locally
- Rand Hooks, grant writing internship with Holocaust Memorial Organization
- Jasmine Day, social media internship with Go West Film Festival
- Katrina Jedue, editorial intern with the CEA Critic
- Keelie Reagan, Denver Scholarship Foundation
what are ways that I can look into pursuing professional writing opportunities in my final semester at UNC that can build upon my previous experience in education?
What is your favorite design resource? And, what advice do you have for someone who gets overwhelmed by learning new programs (like Adobe)?
So, I was a technophobe until about 24, when I entered a PhD program. The composition courses I was teaching emphasized multimedia projects (which was pretty cutting edge in 2004), and I got hooked.
Learning new technologies is frustrating. I think that’s what you have to know going in. And learning the first technology is always the hardest–especially if you are working in Adobe. It does get easier, since most Adobe softwares use the same icons, systems, and even logic (like, for instance, the logic of “layers”).
But these days you have access to a lot of free video tutorials on YouTube. That helps. It also helps to have tangible goals–to have a reason why you are learning a tech. For instance, when I was learning web design and coding, I wanted to make my own teaching website. For years, I coded my websites by hand and came up with really cool designs (at least I thought they were cool).
I am curious, what made you want to be a professor? In class, you talked about having another career path you might have chosen if it weren’t for academics. Did you always want to teach, or did something change your mind about it?
A question I would like to know is, did you always know that your career is what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? How do you feel more confident in the major you have chosen?
So, I went to a small liberal art college. It was an amazing educational experience, but there wasn’t any emphasis of jobs. I did minor in secondary education. I applied to a few graduate schools (way too few, and I had no mentor helping me walk through the process), but I bombed my GRE’s and ended up taking a year off. I taught high school, taking a job as a long-term sub. I also took a Kaplan GRE prep course ($$$), aced the exam (which, um, is a whole other conversation about how messed up the higher education system is), and enrolled for an MA in lit at Boston University. I completed my MA, but I wasn’t a great student. I took a great job as a high school teacher at an innovative public school and taught for three years, until a budget crisis led to a lay off. At the time that was a bummer, but it led to me applying to PhD programs.
I wanted to go to graduate school for two reasons–first of all, I love reading theory, learning about how and why humans think and feel the way they do. I was driven to learn more.
I don’t have any good class related questions so what’s your favorite movie+/book?
Man, favorites are tough. I’ll go with the first two that popped in my head. For book, it is Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet. It is a satire of the apocalypse (and has been turned into an Amazon Prime show with David Tennant). Second place would be Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novel series, which is just incredible. If I’m reaching back to my days as a literature student, I’d go between Gullivers Travels or Wuthering Heights.
For my question, I am curious about what point in time you would chose to visit or even live in?
Big difference between visit and live in. Indoor plumbing is a must. Visit? Ancient Athens. Assuming I can also magically speak Ancient Greek. I’d want to hang out with Socrates, who is in a very, very weird intellectual space. Live? I think I’m going to stay in the present? Sure, we’re in the middle of a pandemic that could mutate into some kind of extinction event, ecological disaster looms on the horizon (seemingly ever more close), and don’t get me started about bees and potential famine. But, air conditioning is really nice, and we have access to so much amazing global cuisine. Globalization is good.
What is your favorite animal?
#TeamDog
Coding
Let’s try scrutinizing a few job adds.
Homework
Read Brumberger and Lauer, “The Evolution of Technical Communication: An Analysis of Industry Job Postings” and complete the Canvas discussion post.
