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TWs --
Now I'm really confused. Pete Kloppenburg wrote:
"I believe anybody who takes an MA in professional writing with an eye to a
job down the road is wasting their time and money. Do it because you want
to, because you are interested, because you enjoy school. "
Being as I am a straw chewing hayseed from the backwoods, I innocently thought
that the word "professional" distinguishes those who get paid for what they
do from those who don't. So ... if a degree in "Professional Writing" doesn't
prepare a person for making a living at writing, what does it prepare a
person for? And if the program doesn't teach "project planning,
HTML coding, online help development, printing," then what exactly is it
preparing the student for? Could it be - perish the thought - that
universities don't actually prepare students for life in the real world,
but only for life in the university? Where are professional writers
supposed to learn the craft? In Left Bank cafes?
If professional writing programs are anything like creative writing
programs, then User Guides would be cryptic, useless and unorganized,
conveying no real useful information at all, when in fact this is true only
of Microsoft's books. So I conclude that most tech writers did not learn
their stuff in professional writing programs, and I can only hope that this
trend continues.
--Alex
===================================================
Alex Ragen - Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.
Home of FireWall-1 - the planet's leading FIREWALL
alex -at- checkpoint -dot- com - http://www.checkpoint.com
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