>> Hi there, I'm Jan Dunkin and I
currently am a technical writer.
I've been working for the same company for
about 18 years and have done various positions
within that company and so right
now, it's technical writing.
Technical writing is when you document the
IT stuff, the Information Technology stuff
that a person does, or this is what I'm doing
in my position is I'm documenting what a person
does and putting it into word or whatever format
that the company wants and then posting
it up onto our internal share point site.
When you have to figure out the right way to
write something, everyone has their own way
or their own style of writing and
to make whatever someone tells you,
you know the sky is blue, well you
can say the blue sky, etcetera,
you know, there's at least different ways.
So part of its mentally, and
making the steps all flow properly.
So a normal day would be you come in, we have a
group mailbox, check to see whatever [inaudible]
in there, you know do those tasks
and then sit with the project meeting
and sit in and then start writing.
[Pause] Well the particular department I'm
in is Fraud so I like learning about the side
of the business where what they do to
prevent it and to protect the customers,
the consumers that have accounts with us.
So that part is fun.
I guess the fact that it is somewhat
creative writing because I get
to choose what words to state it.
This position though does require a lot of, I'd
say for the lack of a better word, perfection.
You're expected to have all your grammar, your
punctuation, all of that kind of stuff exact
and so that when you turn it in, even if it's
a draft, it's expected that way for spelling
and grammatical and punctuation
to be accurate and correct.
[Pause] They would probably prepare first
if they were going to go through college
on probably getting an English,
or a writing degree.
I do know since the time I've been in this,
there are several universities that have courses
that make you or allow you to get a
technical writing degree, so to speak.
Other things would be try Linked In, I
mean I'm on that site and there's I belong
to about 5 different technical writing groups
and so they, you know it's like a sharing thing,
it's kind of like what I'm doing with you now.
Someone outsets an idea and you get all
the other ideas, or you pose a problem.
So I would say basically research it and
technical writing is not just one field,
like I have to be in industry or
I mean in the banking industry.
There's medical and you would write
differently as a medical technical writer
than you would a financial technical
writer than you would a-- etcetera.
So, figure out which branch
or which type you like
and get a mentor and look around the internet.
There is a professional group The Society for
Technical Communicators and that's a good group
to also get into because you get a
lot of support and a lot of resources.
So, just use what's out there.
[Pause] Well I started because I
started in the training department
and in the training department part of what
I did is update their training manuals.
So that part of it got me kind of started
and then I became a admin for the department
and part of that was also
updating internal making documents.
So it's not really a straight path that
I followed because there's not really,
unfortunately for technical writing, most of
people do it, or most companies that I've found,
higher contractors for that
because they don't have enough work.
Usually it's for a project if
they're implementing something new,
they want to document it, it's
implemented and that's the end of it.
So, Strayer came in late in my career.
I got out of high school as normal and the
intent was to go to college right away.
As a matter of fact, I got about a year,
year-and-a-half and then I met true love
or what I thought was true love, and
had to put my college career on hold
because I had created a family and you know
two kids and one of mine is still living
at home with me going to Strayer also.
So after some different life events,
I decided it was time to get back.
I had the time and needed something to do
so it was time to get back and get into it
and it happened to be, at the time, their
campus was close to where I worked so one day
at lunch I went over to it and they said,
"Sure, we'll take you or you can do it."
And the rest is kind of history.
[Pause] Love what you do.
Make sure you love what you do.
Look for the resources, get
the help and keep learning.
You never know everything.
There's always something new out on the
horizon so just keep learning and take
in all you can and share the knowledge.