Wednesday is my busiest day during the week. After struggling to stay awake in my programming lecture I attempted to revive myself by speeding to my next class on my BMX bike while blasting some good hip-hop through my headphones. That attempt was foiled by the "walk-only zone" which covers a majority of the campus.
For not knowing where the classroom was, arriving with a few minutes to spare was an accomplishment for me. I walked in wearing my over-sized beanie, aviator sunglasses and still bumping some straight up thug music. Needless to say I felt like a champion walking into that classroom.
As I stylishly removed my sunglasses to assess the seating options, I realized that the prime seating (those in the center of the classroom - the area where I would be surrounded people who know how to do things I don't) was already occupied. I took the next best option on the far side of the center row.
Upon removing my headphones I discovered the room to be silent except for the clatter of key stokes and clicking. Sitting behind a computer I did nothing to break the silence and instead logged into the PC just as everyone else seemed to have done.
Soon a woman walked in and introduced herself as the professor. I was very impressed with her professional conduct and relieved that she wasn't a boring speaker. One of the first topics the professor started on was the reason which I was enrolled in the class. My hand shot up immediately when she asked who was there to fulfill a "literacy" requirement. Yep. That was me. Only in there because I had to be there. Although I don't mind writing and reading in general I just wasn't looking forward to another class of essays and reading "literary masterpieces" which I personally thought were uninteresting.
Another topic brought up was what I as a student hoped to learn from the class. As if pre-programmed to say it, I immediately thought "I'm in this class to learn how to read and write better." While I don't think that would have been a wrong answer it seemed to be that our professor was looking for a more explicit answer. So began my quest to find the answer.
In Chapter 1 of the textbook it says that the purpose of the book is to improve the reader's skills of technical communication (page 5). It was at this point I started to question what I actually knew about communication and what the addition of the word "technical" meant to it. It's true that I live in an age where communication technology is better than it's ever been. Despite living in a world where communication is really easy it seems that many people area really bad at it. Myself included. I noticed that when my professor asked a question the class would resort to crude language of which at least 30% was "uh"s , "like"s, "stuff"s, and "things". Really poor word choices that demonstrate undeveloped communication skills in my generation.
Notice that I say "undeveloped" rather than saying that my generation is uneducated. We all know better but we have terrible habits of communicating. I think many of us know how to communicate but choose not to. It's because we don't practice professional communication skills. Much of our communication today (like Facebook and text messaging) is very informal. Even this blog I'm writing isn't the most professional.
In class we discussed how a person improves his or her literacy. If I remember correctly the class agreed that practice is the key. So basically, this class is going to be an opportunity to practice technical communication on a professional level.
But what is "technical communication?" After reading the textbook I still don't really see the importance of adding the adjective "technical" in front of "communication" to refer to reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Searching Google for the definition of the word "technical" I came up with "relating to a particular subject."
Since I'm interested in working in the music industry I'd imagine that technical communication on my part would be know how to talk about recording practices and various uses of audio equipment without confusing my audience. Conversely I would need to be able to understand someone telling me about the capabilities of a new music software program. Technical literacy so to say.
My limit here is up. To
conclude for today I’ll finish with a well thought answer to the question of
what I’m hoping to get from the class:
In this class I hope to practice the use of technical
communication so that I can express myself more dynamically and understand more clearly the intentions of those who interact with me.
