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Re: STC certification: what's in it for tech writers?
Subject:Re: STC certification: what's in it for tech writers? From:Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:Lynne Wright <Lynne -dot- Wright -at- tiburoninc -dot- com> Date:Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:54:21 -0700
Nothing new there. When I graduated from college with a minty fresh
bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, the first company that hired me
concluded that my education qualified me to spend my first year OTJ at a
drafting table making changes and converting the sketches and instructions
of more senior engineers into finished production drawings. Years 2-3 as a
"junior engineer" were spent helping to refine project sketches into
instructions the new engineers on the drafting tables could understand, and
doing legwork like stress calcs and catalog surveys. It wasn't until Year 4
that I was actually assigned my first honest-to-goodness "project," and was
able to pass my own sketches and rough estimates to the less senior
individuals for refinement and actual release prep.
The problem today is not with the education of new graduates, but with the
failure of today's industry to add experience to that education before
throwing the newbies into the deep water where the sharks swim.
Gene Kim-Eng
On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Lynne Wright
<Lynne -dot- Wright -at- tiburoninc -dot- com>wrote:
> Which raises another issue: perhaps the root of the problem is that schools
> that run tech writing programs aren't holding their grads to an acceptable
> level of baseline competence.
>
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