RE: Chatty vs. Bitchy

[Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- pinnaclewest -dot- com]

<<
The only thing I regret is that I didn't study mechanical engineering.
At one company I worked at, I worked with a mechanical engineer who
floored me one day when he said, "You should have been an engineer.
You've got the mind for it." Sadly, it never even occurred to me that I
could be an engineer when I was in college, even though my dad was one.
It wasn't a girl job. 

So it goes. >>

Yes, a lot of young people don't realize how it was "back in the day"... My Dad taught Electronics at the local college and had a television repair shop on the side.  As a girl, used to fiddle with the back of the TV and was able to fix it intuitively, but my Dad would yell at me to "get away from there"... but he would take the boys with him to the electronics shop... It wasn't a girl gig.  I used to play with the cars and blocks and stuff my brothers had in kindergarten and grade school.  In kindergarten, they disallowed that and made me go into the girl area and play with dolls and kitchen stuff.  In grade school ages, I simply went out with my brothers and played cars.  I used to play war with the neighbor boys and be the Sargent, until one boy got all the other boys to kick me out, stating "Girls can't be Sergeants; they can only be nurses."  That was boring as I had to wait by the sidelines, so I quit playing war.  I think that's the beginning of my book worm days....

There was a board game we had for a "career woman".  Your choices were: secretary, teacher, flight attendant, or nurse.

I was pretty radical to dream of becoming a technical writer (an idea I had at the age of 10 in 1968 during the era of that same board game).... Because I knew I was great at English and pretty good at science and math....

Now it seems more careers are open to women and young people don't even realize that as recently as the late sixties and early seventies, that was not the case.  

This ties into technical writing because we need to communicate with people of all groups and understanding generational and gender differences helps.

Rose A. Wilcox
CHQ, 17th Floor
Tranz1 QA/Documentation
602-250-2435
Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- PinnacleWest -dot- com

She said "Where ya been ?" I said "No place special"
She said "You look different" I said "Well I guess"
She said "You been gone" I said "That's only natural"
She said "You gonna stay ?" I said "If you want me to, Yes".

-Bob Dylan


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Robohelp X3, from eHelp, lets you quickly and easily create
professional Help systems for all your Windows and Web-based
applications, including Net.

Order RoboHelp X3 in May and receive a $100 mail-in rebate, PLUS
free RoboScreenCapture and WebHelp Merge Module.

Order RoboHelp today: http://www.ehelp.com/techwr-l

---
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.