Personality Type

I recently took the Myers Briggs Personality Test and learned that my personality type is "The Caregiver". When I had first read through all of the sixteen personality types, I was not able to choose one that I thought described me. There were several that I thought might relate to my personality, so I was very curious. Before taking the test, I was very uncertain as to whether I was an introvert or extrovert. While we were discussing both of these personality types in class, I was thinking to myself that I possessed traits in both categories. While I enjoy being by myself at times and enjoying quiet and peaceful relaxation, I also enjoy being around people and I feel comfortable in crowds and talking in front of people. The test revealed that I most often lean toward an extrovert personality, but my preference for it was only one percent! So I think my observation was correct; I seem to have attributes to both personalities.

My personality type is ESFJ: extroverted, sensing, feeling, judging, or as the description points out, extroverted feeling with introverted sensing.The personality description definitely fits my character traits, especially the part about being good at reading other people's thoughts and emotions without them saying anything to me. Another interesting part of the description was that ESFJ's prefer order and structure to their environment rather than abstract and theoretical ideas. This is very true of me, as evidenced by the fact that I do not enjoy or understand poetry that is not to be taken in the literal sense.

The word "judging" in my personality trait seems quite harsh, especially since I have a 78% preference for it, but as we discussed in class, judging does not have to be a bad thing. Judging may be along the lines of being able to look at a problem and judge the ways in which the best decision can be made. The character description explains it as being able to judge others to get information about them, but then turn it into supportive judgments.

My favorite phrase in the character description was that ESFJ's "have a strong focus on the details of life." This is extremely descriptive of me. I have heard countless times how surprised people are when I remember tiny details of an instance that happened months ago. I am very in tune with my surroundings. This test gave me a greater understanding of why my personality is the way it is, and what my strengths and weaknesses are. 

Writing Is an Art

For the past week we have been heavily discussing writing and rhetoric to better understand the deeper meaning of it. After a week of discussion, it has become clear to me that writing can no longer be thought of as a structured process, but as an art form.

The idea of rhetoric began long long ago and brought into play things such as the three appeals (logos, ethos, and pathos) from Aristotle, and the five cannons (invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery) from Cicero. Writing went through time periods such as the classics, medieval, renaissance, enlightenment, and modern. For me anyhow, it is easy to think of these time periods relating to the writing and art that came out of them.

As for the definition of rhetoric, it has gone through several different phases, meaning different things at different time periods. Basically, rhetoric is something we can never get away from - it is surrounding us in all of our knowledge, speaking, and writing.

Over time, people have tried to put a model to writing (inverted pyramid), but we have learned that successful writing does not have to be done in this way! It can be molded and shaped to the writers preferences and to what the perceived audience will enjoy. Therefore, writing is not static, but abstract. Writing is art.

Literacy and Work

Glynda Hull talks in her article, "Hearing Other Voices: A Critical Assessment of Popular Views on Literacy and Work" about American workers not having proper literacy skills. While this article is surely outdated (1997) many of its points are relevant today. Literacy is not something you just "get," but something that has to be learned over time. Literacy is not only one skill, but many skills combining and working together. This is similar to writing which is not just one process, but many processes. I thought it was very interesting that Hull pointed out how many other skills there are that go into working at any job, even at an assembly line. It's not just knowing how to read and write, but having adaptability and communication skills. So even back 15 years ago, workers were not necessarily being taught or expected to have all of the important skills for jobs.

In our world today, the situation is somewhat different. While illiteracy in reading and writing is still a problem I am sure, especially with the number of immigrants in our country, there is a new type of illiteracy. Computer illiteracy. With rapidly advancing technology, this is a major problem for the generations before us since they did not grow up with computers. As time goes on, there are becoming more technical skills a person must have in order to get a job, increasing the relevancy of this article.

Summaries/ "What Is Writing?"

Chapter nine of our Kolin book discussed summaries. This concept was quite new to me. So far in my English courses, I have heard the phrase over and over and over, "Do not summarize," so much so that I have an instant disliking to the word. While writing papers about articles, short stories, or novels, we are told to choose one specific topic of the passage to focus on, key word: specific. And then we are told, "Do not summarize. Not even for just a paragraph." At first this was extremely annoying, "How will my audience be able to follow my paper if I don't give them any background?" However, last semester I was given a helpful tip: think of your audience as only those who are interested and have knowledge of your topic. I learned how to write papers like this quite well.

But now we are told to do what?? Summarize! My question from the previous paragraph now applies; your audience will not know what you are talking about unless you give them the basics of your material. The most difficult thing for me when it comes to summarizing is to avoid inserting my own opinion or explanation of the ideas. By summarizing, I feel like I am writing down someone else's thoughts only and nothing is actually coming from my own brain. I suppose it is something a writer must get used to and learn how to do for the professional job market.

The communication triangle was introduced to us in the reading titled "What Is Writing?" The article brought out the point that writing is not just simple steps you need to follow and then KABOOM! You have writing. There are guidelines and rules regarding grammar and mechanics, but writing overall is a process, and there is not just one way to do it. The combination of logos (the subject/appeal to reason), ethos (the writer/appeal to character), and pathos (the reader/appeal to emotion) creates the message your writing will give. There are many more parts to writing that work together to create a written work. So don't be fooled! Not just anyone can do this.

ATTW 2

(A note of explanation: The Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) is an emailing list that I subscribe to to better my understanding of what professional writers do. The posts titled ATTW are about the emails I receive.)

Several messages included job advertisements for professors of professional and technical writing at various universities. As a student, I tend to view professors at the top of the professional job spectrum, but it was interesting to note that just like someone fresh out of college, they too have to apply for jobs, create a resume and cover letter, go through interviews, and have references. That being said, no matter how high up we get in the professional job market, we will always have to rely on things such as these that we are learning about in class.

Another message talked about dreaded accreditation, a difficult but rewarding process. Through accreditation, schools can make improvements to learning and the writing process among students. I had never heard of this process before, but if it can help with the learning process across campuses, I hope my professors are implementing this technique.

Another message discussed how design might be helpful in understanding complex information. This is very interesting to me since we are going to be learning a lot about design (something I am not too familiar with) in this class. If what they are saying is true, by designing something  a different way, your audience can learn in an easier way from the material you are presenting. This is something all writers should make note of and consider throughout their writing process because by making something easier for readers, you are enhancing that line of communication and contact between reader and writer, as discussed in the Lindemann article.

Post Write: Resume/Cover Letter Assignment

This assignment was the first time I had written a professional resume and cover letter applying for a job. I feel like my resume looked quite professional. It was very well organized and had a clean, structured look to it, which I think is very important for trying to impress a potential future employer. I believe I described the experience I have had with impressive and convincing descriptions of what I learned and acquired from the work I did there. I feel like I concluded the right material for my resume, but since this is the first time I have really worked on something like this, I am sure there are things I should revise and reconsider about my wording and information included.

My cover letter was something I struggled with a little more.While my cover letter was quite short, I think it hit all the main points that needed to be brought up. Since my job ad did not have many qualifications besides having experience in writing and news and was quite short to begin with, I was not all the way sure what to include to convince the employer that I had everything it would take to do this job. However, I think I did pretty good for my first try at it. After writing an original draft, I revised it to sound more professional and used a thesaurus to omit some repeated words and replace them with more interesting ones.

It was difficult to decide how much to write about my work and volunteer experience in my cover letter. Of course I wanted to include my experience with The Northern Iowan (which was completely fictional), but what else was appropriate? My other jobs (realistically) did not have anything to do with writing or news, but they did teach me valuable work place skills, which I included in the third paragraph. If there is something I am expecting comments and suggestions about, I would definitely point to that aspect.

Association for Teachers of Technical Writing 1

(A note of explanation: The Association for Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) is an emailing list that I subscribe to to better my understanding of what professional writers do. The posts titled ATTW are about the emails I receive.)


The first message talked about looking for an editor for a quarterly journal. I realized how much work is involved in doing something so major as editing a journal. You must have a team working with you - in this case, the institution you are working for- and also you need to have people to support you, an “editorial team” as the article suggests. I have often wanted to become an editor of something someday and this opened my eyes a little more to all the work that must be put forth to get to such a position. Not only must you have abundant experience and professional writing skills, but also you must have a team working for you to make something like this possible.

The second message discussed writing about and for gaming industries. This is probably something I have never thought through before...someone, somewhere has to write video games? Clearly, I have never spent much time at the sport, but from what I have seen, they are very complex! Professional writing really is in so many different places. Whatever your interests may be, you could probably find a job writing about them.

The third message talked about the Association for Business Communication. It is something similar to the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing and they are encouraged to join it. Since we have recently been working on cover letters and resumes in class, I noticed that this email was similar in ways; it was trying to convince the readers that this association and membership was worth the cost and time to read.

Good Ol' Pat Brown

In class we looked at our resumes for Pat Brown (fictional neutral gender individual who cannot, for the life of him/her, write a thing) and began to write a fictional cover letter for a job Pat is applying to. While I do not have much experience, I think I am pretty good at creating a professional looking resume. I like things lined up and coordinated just so, and I think that will pay off in my own resume. Cover letters on the other hand...I have never attempted to write before. However, I do not think it was too awful! After some thought and following the book instructions, I started what I thought was a pretty good cover letter. Writing my own, however, may take a little more time.

Resumes

Today in class we discussed resumes and possible jobs we might have relating to professional writing. So far, the job that has appealed to me most is an editor. I am definitely a stickler for grammar and spelling when it comes to school/professional documents, so I think I would be pretty good at it. That being said, when it comes time for me to work on this resume/cover letter/application project, I will be trying to find a job that relates to editing.

With my dad being the president of a company, I have heard endless tales of applicants with unprofessional and downright awful skills when it comes to creating a resume and cover letter. Therefore, I think I understand pretty well that this is a very important skill to have and something that needs to be practiced. I am still a sophomore, so it will be about 3 years until I am looking for a professional job out there, but I think this is something that would be great for me to work on now.

What Is Rhetoric?

We have been talking in class a lot about rhetoric and what that means. I will admit, I am still a bit confused about this word, so I took the liberty of asking the dictionary:

1:  the art of speaking or writing effectively: as

a : the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times

b : the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion

2:

a : skill in the effective use of speech

b : a type or mode of language or speech; also : insincere or grandiloquent language

3

: verbal communication : discourse

Still a little lost, but I think a really good point brought up in class is that there are many different ways of looking at things, writing included. Different ways of writing about a topic can give you different results. That makes sense, so for now, that is rhetoric.

What is a professional writer? This question has been looming over our class for a week now. From what I can see, a professional writer is a writer who can put technical terms into something that can be understood by everyone else. That may be too specific, but it’s a start. A professional writer must know different types of writing inside and out. They must be flexible to shift between one style of writing and another as they are given different projects to work on. As a professional writer you will need to ask questions, probably lots of questions, so you need to be assertive and not be afraid to admit that you don’t know something.