Re: A question about education (long-ish)

[Dan Brinegar <vr2link -at- vr2link -dot- com>]

Hi Tracey, I'm not working anymore, but feel I'm qualified to answer based
on twenty years experience in the field (including staying at work till 5am
trying to switch from my techsupport hat to my writer hat so I could fix
the doggone Welcome-manual ;-)

On Sat, 16 Dec 2000 09:37:21 -0600,  Tracey Claybon
<tclaybon -at- earthlink -dot- net> wrote:

> I am both new to the list and a relatively new
>technical writer.  Currently TW is a sideline to my job as technical support
>for a ISP, but I am hoping to break into a job as a beginning TW sometime in
>the next month in my company.

Congrats, I think ;-)
>
>I wanted to know if anyone had advice on whether it was better to
>"transition" into TW via experience and catch as catch can, or

-Experience-

If the techwriting you'll be doing is on the same topic(s) as you've been
supporting, you've got a leg up in that you know the subject AND know the
audience-- solving the top two knottiest problems in the trade. [My
oft-told tale of techsupport being instant audience analysis via telephonic
mind-meld with the customer on the other end who just bought a no-name PC
and wants to get online NOW... and once you've mind-melded with a dialup
customer, it's much easier to snag any other kind of customer and pick
their brains on what they might want to know about whatever product it is
you're documenting next ].

I'm assuming you've had Freshman English and some sort of  coursework; and
you appear to have the desire to learn: so there's your jump-start.  Feel
free to jump right in!

>get a community college certificate

If there's one available in your area, and you'll be working at the same
time you're studying, I guess it couldn't hurt; but it's not required, and
the 'Portfolio vs. Credentials' TECHWR-L flamewar can start right away 8-)

If you're concerned that you won't have the credentials some agency or HR
muffin will want, remember that you can show them that you've done X-number
of  books while at $ISP and have worked in the industry for X-years...

>or go to college in TW?
>

Why? Do you have any college already? Why stop working for two or four
years to get a piece of paper while the technology you'll be working with
advances/fails/gets-replaced? Again, the 'Portfolio vs. Credentials'
TECHWR-L  contestants can line up over *there* ;-)

My non-scientific, totally emotional, been-there-done-that, process-grunt
opinion  is that it's better to be in the trenches NOW and actually SEE
what's happening in the world you'll be working in.

[as an example of software advances/failures/replacements since I started
bobbing on the Net in 1995 as an industrial-automation techwriter (non
net-geeks will NOT be quizzed on the following acronyms): Net provision has
gone from home-grown local nets on Un*xy corporate big-iron to BSD, to NT,
to plug-n-pray IIS, back to Apache, back to hand-rolled IIS, to hand-rolled
on RedHat, to... Oracle????!?!?! -- man-pages to Frame to HTML to PDF to
DHTML to Nethelp to CSS to compiled-HTML to XML to HTML... just try to keep
up with that if you'd been in school all this time...]

In my experience (and things may have changed somewhat in the couple of
years I've been housebound) the best way to become a Net $deity is to do
it... Bobs become Admins, Admin-Bobs don't get pointy hair, Writing
Admin-Bobs get published and earn better positions at other companies, a
published Net $deity can write his/her own ticket.

YMMV, Not all Bobs I evangelised got better, some wrote really sucky books,
some left the field, some have starved to death on now-worthless stock
options, some went outta business big time, and SOME are still doing very
well for themselves even after the dot-com crash...

>If the best route is college, where would I find a list of the best schools?
>

Check the TECHWR-L directory at
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/directory/index.html and start on the
Beginner's links, where you'll find info on getting started, education, and
tools; then move down the page to general Education and Training... and
most every question you could possible have on techwriting practices is
still in the archives ;-)


Good luck, and
Best Regards,
dan'l


-------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Brinegar, Former Chief Acting Deputy Assistant Mac Support Developer,
                        Arizona's only REAL Ex-NetZone Employee's Association

"We are a proud group, are we not?
  The Largest Professional Organization in the State!" --JRJones

vr2link -at- vr2link -dot- com          CCDB Vr2Link
http://www.vr2link.com     Performance S u p p o r t Svcs.



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