Response to Samantha's Articles

Extracurricular:  This was certainly an academic article while almost everything else we have read as part of these readings have been web articles or lists. That said, there really wasn't that much information to be found inside beyond the, again, obvious importance of extracurricular activities for those young people going into the job market fresh from college. The article shows through evidence that those students who are more plugged in, and participate more are usually more successful. This study was based out of a French speaking university in Switzerland, which may or may not affect how the students end up. I can't remember what the overall project this is being applied to, but it seems like good advice for anyone who is currently pursuing a baccalaureate degree.

Uncovering:  This article pulled no punches in its approach to instructing prospective law school attendees, and in fact painted a very realistic picture (as I understand it). It stressed the importance of aggressively going after a potential employer to both demonstrate how much you want the job as well as to ensure that your voice is heard among all the others crying out. The other point that I found interesting was that this article used real life examples of what some students had to do to finish law school. Of course, there is no way to know if this is true or not, but as with everything in life, we trust until we are lied to.

Response to Stephanie's Articles

Both of these articles come from the dreaded education-portal.com, a resource which I myself am guilty of referencing, and even though the majority of information contained within is obvious and what should be common sense, there are some good points and things to keep in mind in there. I thought that the old adage, location, location, location, was plugged adequately here, in reference to how valuable the location of any selected educational institution can be in reference to any publishing firm or company in the vicinity. This makes a lot of sense. While I'm sure there are many more publishing outlets, there is also going to be a huge amount of competition for those jobs. The other information I took away was the difference between book and magazine publishing, which as it turns out, isn't really that much of a difference. The complicated thing, and one that an individual would need to decide on their own, is what discipline of publishing they wanted to try to break into. These articles aren't going to give you any easy answers to difficult questions, merely acceptable places to begin a legitimate inquiry.

Responses to Steven's Articles

WikiHow:  This article presented a very concise and easily understandable list of things that you as a prospective freelance writer need to do. I found it very interesting that they talked at length about how the profession can become isolating, and that you may find yourself feeling lonely. I never really considered that before, but it seems like its a totally possible outcome of the career. The requirements for getting into the profession all seemed to be fairly common sense to me. Communication was one thing that I assumed you would need to be proficient at, but didn't really realize just how important it would be. I liked that the article presented the career in a very realistic way financially, instructing that a person should plan to supplement a main source of income for a while before making the jump to full time, and whenever doing so, to make sure that it is doable.

Rivendale:  This article gave a very brief overview of several do-it-yourself publishing alternatives to traditional firms. While finding out about Feedbooks, Smashword, and Wattpad seems like a useful thing for a prospective writer, I didn't think this article really contained much valuable information. He refers to the world of traditional publishing as a scary place, but doesn't give any anecdotes or information to back this up. I think it would be better if he had painted a picture of the two routes, and left it up to the reader to decide.

Writing Assistance:  Probably the main thing I took away from this article is that there are things like the STC Job Board. This is huge for anyone who might be considering becoming a freelance technical writer, and I'm sure that other disciplines have similar resources. Other than this, this article was interesting to take a somewhat different viewpoint of the process, from that of the employer rather than the job seeker. Pretty much all of the requirements were common sense, especially after the previous articles.

Response to Brianna's Articles

I thought all three articles did a good job of giving a brief overview of the editing field, but really didn't get too in depth about any one thing. Almost all the information presented is what I would consider to be common sense for someone interested in becoming an editor. I took two basic things away from these articles:  1) experience is highly valued when it comes to getting jobs and 2)  a college degree is essential. More specific detail or examples of the course in which other people have worked their way up into the industry would be helpful, as would directions to a more substantial information bearing resource available to students before graduating and being cast out into the horrid world of the post grad English profession seeking individual. I think that these articles provided a good jumping off point, but I'm sure there are much better articles out there.

Response to Melissa's Articles

Forbes:  I thought this article was very interesting. It discussed a lot of things that I never would have considered in relation to properly building a business plan. It made it very apparent from the beginning that this is definitely technical writing. You need to understand your audience and adapt whatever you generate to best appeal to them in the hopes of getting your business off the ground. The importance of discussing your competition was surprising as well, but in reality makes total sense. If you don't show that there is a market for whatever it is you want to do, why would someone give you money? Not answering every possible question and scenario makes total sense as well. It really seems like writing a business plan would require a lot of extra knowledge of business practices as well as similar businesses to the one which you want to start. I think the article did a good, quick and dirty job of presenting the most important steps in designing a plan.

Entrepreneur:  This was a much more intense article than the one from Forbes. Much of the same guidance and information was present here, but it was MUCH more fleshed out and detailed. I found a lot of great information here that I didn't see in Forbes. The importance of the legal writing dealing with the power structure of the business was interesting - I wouldn't have thought that you would need to address all of these issues which would be essential to whatever form the business eventually might take. There were also some math formulas to help the enterprising entrepreneur calculate things like employee numbers required and capital requirements. I think the article did a good job of breaking this down to a level that anyone could understand, or at least have a better chance of understanding. This was a bit overwhelming though, it threw tons and tons of information, all of which was presented as essential to the overall success of the plan. The one thing that I didn't really see in either article was guidance as far as writing style and what can be successful or not successful. Is it appropriate to be formal at all times? Can you be successful with a less formal approach? I imagine that this, like everything else, needs to be tailored to the business and the investor.