RE: School vs experience...

["Greg Thompson" <gthompson -at- conformia -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Thompson 
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 9:33 AM
To: 'Bonnie Granat'; TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: School vs experience...

I am in a similar but not an exactly the same proverbial boat:

I am starting an MFA program in writing next month, concentrating on
Creative Non Fiction (definitely the most lucrative of the MFA
concentrations compared to poetry or short fiction/novel). I chose this
route for a number of reasons? I too had been part of the dotcom layoff
and found it hard to find any work, let alone contract work, in tech
writing. Also, I was somewhat tired of tech writing at the time anyway. 

I was enrolled in an Online Masters Program in Instructional Technology
but given the limited job prospects because of the downturn, my waning
interest in technology, my waning desire to spend tons of money in
something that was a waning interest, my increasing interest in getting
back in touch with my root love of the humanities, my failure to find
regular paid work as a non tech writer (I learned it is very had to
transition without training in a depressed economy. Eventually, the
contract work as a paid tech writer has picked up significantly), I
decided to stop for the foreseeable future (though I did like the online
program I was in) and get my MFA. My MFA is to become educated about
other forms of writing and is to allow me to pursue some writing jobs
that were closed to me whenever someone saw "tech writer" on my resume.
I am using Masters Program to accelerate my transition to other forms of
writing and to network and build contacts in other, non technical
writing fields. Meanwhile, I plan to continue to contract my way though
grad school into the foreseeable future.

I am excited but I am also scared. I never really realized how much
easier it would be just to whine about my career as a tech writer and
not actually do anything to change it :)


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