Reflection On a Career in Writing
Being only 12 hours away from the final portfolio presentation for my Careers In Writing class at KSU, we are tasked with one last post: to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned, the skills we’ve honed, and ideas we’ve explored in the development of our professional identity.
Coming to an end..
For my personal experience, the most insightful lesson I’ve learned and skill I am still aiming to develop is writing with the intention of having it digitally displayed or represented (like right now). While I still prefer to read from something leatherbound or a hard copy, the reality is that the vast majority of writing is written and read digitally. In this class, I’ve learned just how essential it is to consider how your writing looks on a screen. Just as a writer develops their voice and demeanor purely for how the text reads barebones, there is now an aspect to how that text is represented aesthetically outside of the words used themselves. Is the text taking up prime real-estate on the web page? Is it centered and easy to follow directionally? Both of these techniques, I’ve tried to utilize and perfect on one of my Essay revisions, but noticeably I still have a long way to go. This is what Lisa Dush, a profound researcher whose work this class has introduced me to, calls writing becoming content.
In my favored career trajectory towards something STEM related, the majority of the writing is accomplished in the form of research articles and papers. A good portion of these research papers are a wall of text with a few subheadings, but since conducting our Media Consumption Analysis, I’ve realized the capability for these heavy academic writings to shine with some multimodal components and redesigning for digital consumption. The research writing can take on new opportunities for engagement, learning, and contrast with embedded graphics and hyperlinks, polishing the work for a digital age and letting the research explain itself through forms other than raw text. This class introduced to me an invaluable tool to accomplish these new capabilities: Canva. I am by no means an aficionado in all things design, so the opportunity granted by this class to expose me to new tools assisting in design is something I treat as invaluable.
In the future..
My professional identity is something that is going to be under construction for a time period far, far away from today, but my progression through this class has informed that identity in a variety of different ways. I enjoy writing, the act and the consumption of it, but I really wouldn’t have called myself a ‘writer’ before this class. I probably still won’t, but that doesn’t mean I cannot fulfill or pursue a career in writing in the future. Through this class, I’ve learned to evaluate my ability to research, analyze, develop, and create writing as something that is without a doubt in demand in the professional world. Even though I want to ultimately become an engineer, those skills are more than applicable in that field, or any field to be honest, as evidenced from my interview with the EE Chair himself! I want my portfolio to serve as many things in my professional journey but the non-negotiables are: a journal cataloging my growth and project development over time and a commentary/reflection on my writing. Just as it states on my landing page, I want it to house my STEM and literary endeavors with the opportunity for collaboration and reflection from myself and anyone stopping by. To wrap this post up, I wanted to give a huge thanks to our class and my professor HK: you all rule.