Re: Academic careers vs. technical writing

["Peter C. Johnson" <raoul -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM>]

Arleta scribeth:

>My combination of skills has made me very marketable. I have a liberal
>arts degree (Spanish), and also took most of our Engineering school's
>pre-engineering courses (over 30 hours). This technical training has
>helped me immensely. The more technical frames of reference you have
>(calculus, physics, computers, etc.), the easier it is to learn the
>concepts of fields that are new to you.

Agreed. I majored in Russian Language and Literature and served for a
number of years as an intelligence officer in the US Army and then worked
in the same line in the civilian sector. 1991 = no more USSR = no more job.
I turned to technical writing since I'd written a heck of a lot of reports
and had been in "information design" before it was such a buzzword. I had
turned oceans of arcane information into pictures and tables for people
under severe stress (i.e., World War III was about to start or something).

I had a bent for technology and went back to school and took programming
courses. While working. Then got a degree in graphic design. While working.
All of this was hard, but now I can work from concept through design
through 4-color, offset printing. It's been a hard number of years, but
worth it.


Peter C. Johnson
raoul -at- mindspring -dot- com
Atlanta

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