Throughout my graduate studies I connected assignments to my professional or family life. I find myself using the theories and skills I acquired in the graduate program every day in my professional life to make decisions and connect with my colleagues and product users. I spend a great deal of time at work teaching through conversations and group training presentations. So, it has been very rewarding to apply Language Theory and Composition Theory principles to lead quality training and mentoring, as well as Technical Communication Theory principles to produce quality applications that are used by my colleagues and customers. Since entering the MA program, the design of my user interfaces have improved as I have applied analyses of my audience and provisional persona, which I studied in Language Theory, Advanced Nonfiction, Technical Communication Theory and Design and Usability courses.

 

Just how did these courses help me to become the person I am today? In Language Theory and Conflict Analysis and Intervention courses, I learned how framing and reframing perspectives can move parties toward healthy and collaborative resolutions to conflict. Tone, body language, face, authority, power, and conversational styles all influence how people interact with each other and the outcomes of their communication. In Advanced Nonfiction, I learned how different writing styles can evoke feeling within an audience to create meaningful connections between storyteller and audience. Some stories are sad while others are happy, but either way, well-crafted stories can evoke empathy and feelings that connect people with their sense of common humanity. For example, I benefitted from Richard Preston’s piece, The Hot Zone, and the excerpt from Panic in Level 4 about Preston’s research and note-taking skills. I have applied his example of scripting an interview and noting my observations alongside interview notes when I interview people for my own stories. I found it interesting that he used his observations (recorded as notes) to describe the interviewee’s appearance, clothes, personality and body language, as well as smells in the air, sights, and sounds in his subsequent stories. It effectively built his character in the reader’s mind. Other readings for Advanced Nonfiction also included similar details and modelled techniques for telling stories about people using themes like cooking and eating in a way that is secondary to telling their story. I was inspired by the effectiveness of how these authors connected with readers and I used their examples as inspiration for my own compositions about family members.

 

To build on the theme of connection even further, my coursework in Conflict Analysis and Intervention and Family Communication have opened new concepts of collaborative meaning-making into my life. I have learned to think it terms of co-creating meaning by sharing positive stories thanks to the Coordinated Management of Meaning theory discussed in both of my Applied Communications courses and Advanced Persuasive Writing, as well as Relational Dialectic Theory, which advocates engaging in rituals to transcend tensions and establish intimate communication among family members.

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Explore my portfolio to learn about my career as a technical communicator, project manager, and IT professional; about my family and our legacy of farming; and about my education in rhetoric, composition, and technical communications.