Re: How many have Bachelor's degree? (was RE: Creative, and Certified too)

[Al Geist <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>]

I got my first job as a Technical Writer without a degree, but I had 
been involved in electronics since I was 10.  Dad had a TV/Radio repair 
shop.  (Anyone know how a pentagrid converter works?  Hint, it's a 
vacuum tube.)  However, with that said, I got my last job as a TW 
because I had a degree in Journalism and Computer Science and a host of 
one-to-three day seminars on everything from Designing Websites with 
Dreamweaver to Access 2000 Data Base Development.   You can probably 
still get work today as a TW by bypassing a University education, but I 
seriously doubt it.  The "good old days" are behind us now.

Incidentally, I have recently expanded into Marcom because 1) it's more 
fun, 2) it pays a lot better and 3) I'm tired of 3-6 month contracts.  
The funny thing is a large part of my task is to rewrite all the old 
hardware manuals.  They riddled with inaccuracies (the person who 
"wrote" them hates dictionaries and could care less about spelling) and 
they were designed by someone who prided himself on his ability to pack 
as many different type families per document as possible.  To make 
matters worse, for the last three years, the word "troubleshooting" was 
spelled with a hyphen and put it in 36 point Helvetica on the front page 
of every technical manual.  (Did I say that this person also has a 
Masters in Computer Science?)

I need a Corona to celebrate my newfound job security.

Al

Cook, John wrote: