During my time as a student at UNCW I underwent many personal changes regarding my career and life goals. I started out wanting to become a physicist, but that quickly changed once I got a taste of higher level calculus and physics. In retrospect it seems like a complete 180 to switch from wanting to go into a career focused on math and science to a career focused on language and its effectual application. I found that I enjoyed learning about English and how many different aspects there were to consider in one's writing.
I learned about the history of rhetoric with Dr. Anthony Atkins which, at first, seemed to be a glorified history class. However, I quickly realized how helpful the concepts were within my own writing. Understanding the thought processes of philosophers and rhetoricians of old helped me identify my own appeals within my writing, and subsequently helped me enhance the arguments I forwarded. I learned how to consider the audience of my writing with more depth in my classes with Dr. China, Dr. Weaver, and Dr. Tirrell. Dr. China had her class on memes, Dr. Weaver a class on crisis communication, and Dr. Tirrell a class on document composition. Each of these classes engrained an understanding and appreciation for the sociocultural aspects surrounding a target audience. By understanding the audience more in depth this way I was able to shape my writing to appeal better to my targeted audience. I loved learning a myriad of concepts within my time at the Professional Writing program, although some of the skills I learned were less clear in the time I was using them.
I was happiest within the program when I was learning new concepts and applying them to my papers. The advancement in my writing was clear and immediately gratifying. However, when having to produce projects that incorporated multimedia or used a different medium entirely I had a hard time finding the use of the projects. In Dr. Tirrell's class we had to create a map, a physical place mark for that map, and a podcast. When I was creating these projects I was confused as to how this related to the professional writing major. It was after about a month that I understood how the use of different mediums could apply concepts that we learned in other classes in an entirely different manner. The experience gave me further insight into rhetorical appeals and how culture relates to many aspects of language outside of the simple written word, not to mention it provided me with a new set of skills in many different mediums.
Another new set of skills I developed during my time with the Professional Writing program were interpersonal skills. I learned how to properly interview people from the podcast with Dr. Tirrell and a class on journalism with Dr. Roiland. Each class taught different aspects of interviewing. For the podcast one should have some set out questions but be ready and willing to engage the interviewee to obtain a more satisfying story that flows properly. In journalism I was ingrained with a need to know specific questions I needed to ask to obtain a variety of information. As a bonus both classes also provided me with writing skills in a new style.
My time at UNCW has focused my career goals and prepared me to fulfill them through the skills I’ve obtained and the lessons I’ve learned. I gained tools to adapt and overcome many different obstacles during my time in the Professional Writing program.While I may not have understood the role certain multimodal projects had in those goals initially their effect became clear with time. My writing has improved, my understanding of language and its effects has improved, and I have gained skills which will support me in a myriad of projects in the future.