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Subject:Re: Grad school vs. the world From:Z3BCG -at- TTACS -dot- TTU -dot- EDU Date:Mon, 25 Oct 1993 15:02:17 -0600
Susan and interested others,
I have a master's degree in technical writing, and it wasn't
until worked in industry writing for a few years that I
realized what I wanted to do with technical writing. I
quickly became bored with the practical applications of what
I had studied as a graduate student, especially when I was
using my skills to write documents about subjects in which I
really had no interest. I found that I was much more
intrigued by research and theory than practice, and that I
wanted to invest my energy researching and writing about
concepts that interested. As Stuart Selber and Stephen
Bernhardt suggest, I need a Ph.D. to find a job that will
let me focus on research, and it's very hard to give up a
full-time writing job to take a teaching fellowship that
pays $7500 a year! For me, it's worth it.
By the way, I think I have had an easier time teaching
technical writing than my colleagues who have never written
in the business world. I plan to return to industry to do an
ethnographic study for dissertation. That should keep me a
little up-to-date with what is going on in the "real" world.
Brenda Gordon
z3bcg -at- ttacs1 -dot- ttu -dot- edu
