Writing 310 Blog Post 4

Purpose statement: This blog post will describe an internship that I'm interested in pursuing in order to set a direction for my future work in this class.

Briefly explain the job/internship; scholarship; graduate degree you will use for the focus of Unit #1. Write a general, comprehensive personal statement to this question: Why do you want the job, internship, scholarship, or admittance to the grad program and what about your life/education/work experiences and personality make you uniquely qualified for the position?

I'm still deciding whether I want to take a job that can make me more money this summer or focus on finding something in the field I'm studying. For the purposes of this assignment, though, I'm going to focus on an internship. After a fairly short search, I found an interesting one as a Publicity/Public Relations intern for Warner Media. It's strange because there's a single application for multiple internships in different fields, but I think it could be a good opportunity. 

The list of requirements is: 

"Pursuit of a college degree in Communications or a related major.

Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel.

Strong writing, research, and organization skills.

Passion for the entertainment industry; current knowledge of PR industry trends, practices, and tools.

Outstanding time management skills to handle multiple and changing priorities."

I'm currently an English major, but I'm planning on adding a Public Relations major. I think that English is a good major to bring to this position, especially given the requirement for writing skills. This combination of majors gives me a lot of focus on the kind of skills needed for this position.

I have used Excel and other Microsoft Office apps, though I wouldn't consider myself "proficient." However, I'm good at catching on to new technology, so I think it wouldn't be too hard to develop this skillset before the summer comes around.

Writing, research, and organization are all key parts of being an English major, and also developed in my journalism work. Writing in particular has been a passion of mine since elementary school.

I've developed good time management skills through journalism, and my perfectionist streak also means that I tend to get much more invested in work when I have deadlines and commitment. 

Overall, this internship (or another one in the field of PR) seems very appealing to me, and frankly it solidified my idea to double-major. Though I have some practical skills to develop before I meet all the necessities for this position, I think my passion and soft skills lend themselves perfectly to this line of work. Getting an internship at such a big company might be a challenge, but I think that it would stand out as experience for a future career.

Writing 310 Blog Post 3

Purpose Statement: This blog post will list job skills that I possess (taken from a list from the Purdue Online Writing Lab) and how I've developed them in order to work toward creating a resume that I will eventually use to pursue a job.

My work experience has been pretty limited. I've worked as a reporter for about the last year, and over the summer of 2021 I worked at a lemonade stand at various county fairs in Oregon. 

Also, several skills seemed synonymous, or closely related enough that I didn't want to write multiple stories, so I'll lump them together.

1. "Creating new ideas / thinking of creative ideas / proposing ideas / selling ideas / expressing ideas orally to individuals or groups"

As a reporter, first at the Linn-Benton Commuter and now the George Fox Crescent, I've had to develop story ideas, then pitch them to the editors or other leaders of the paper. The first two in this list go together in the idea stage, and the second two, though related, aren't exactly the same. The Commuter was less structured, and I wrote my stories first, then proposed them for publication. For the Commuter, I've had to give reasons for my ideas before I begin the reporting process, so expressing and "selling" them is more important.

2. "Coping with deadlines"

Reporting has made me have to pay much closer attention to deadlines than I had before. Sometimes this means staying up late working on a story, possibly one I've reported the night before the deadline. At the Crescent, this has included deadlines for ideas as well as completed stories.

3. "Finding information / conducting interviews / gathering information / listening to others / coordinating schedules/times / picking out important information"

Reporting involves interviews as well as using stored sources and looking for information in other places. When I'm interviewing people, I often have to be the one who's flexible on times and days, which can get frustrating. I've also developed active listening skills and become a better verbal communicator through this line of work. Finally, I have to pick out important information, which can include deciding what angle I want to take on a story mid-interview.

4. "Meeting (new) people / interacting with people at different levels"

Another aspect of interviews is interacting with people I usually wouldn't—including school officials, business owners, and local governmental candidates. I also have to interact with coworkers, including my superiors, on a semi-regular basis.

5. "Reporting information / summarizing information / writing for publication"

The style of writing I've been doing as a reporter has taught me to be more clear and concise than in academic writing. I've also had to detach myself from my work to some degree, as some of my writing has gone through more intense revision than I'm used to. These steps all help me report and summarize the information I'm trying to get across more effectively.

6. "Being thorough / taking personal responsibility / taking independent action / developing plans for projects"

Journalism is often a solitary job, even within the context of an organization. I have to be self-motivated and find who to interview and where else to get information. I also have to make sure that I'm getting a full picture of what's going on, not only taking in one perspective.

7. "Supervising employees / overseeing operations / teaching/instructing/training individuals / coaching individuals"

Working at the fair over the summer, I wasn't officially a manager, but I ended up taking on a similar role because several other employees started after me. This meant that I had to show them what to do while simultaneously keeping the operation of the company running. 

8. "Handling complaints / tolerating interruptions / maintaining emotional control under stress / providing customers with service"

Customer service is a taxing job, and it involved responding to complaints quickly and not letting them interrupt the flow of business. I also had to manage other interruptions, like a power outage and a shooting.

9. "Enduring long hours"

Both these jobs have had long hours in different ways. Though journalism isn't too much of an overall time commitment, it can be unpredictable and requires me to be flexible, especially with the commitments of college and sports. At the fair, I was working days as long as ten hours with an hour-long commute each way. 

Writing 310 Blog Post 2

Purpose statement: This blog post will discuss the issue of lack of access to COVID tests in the city of Newberg in order to show my professor that I'm brainstorming for my final project, a white paper that will attempt to help with a problem in the Newberg community.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I probably spent an hour scrolling through Newberg Facebook groups and essentially only saw arguments about the recall election. All that aside, however, I eventually settled on another issue: lack of COVID tests.

George Fox University announced in an email sent on 11 January that they would only test people with COVID symptoms, a change in their policy from the previous semester. About a week later, on 19 January, they updated this to a policy of only testing "people with moderate/severe illness or people with high risk for complications." This time, they clarified that this guidance came from Yamhill County and the Oregon Health Authority, due to a shortage of tests that spans far beyond Newberg.

This issue is in part caused by the Omicron variant's ability to evade the protection of vaccines. On a local level, it's clear that, though unvaccinated people still make up a disproportionate number of cases, their share has shrunk as the pandemic has entered the new wave. 

This issue will hopefully be resolved by a drop in cases as the omicron spike passes, but the WHO has warned that omicron will not be the last variant of concern.

Though Newberg can't do much to solve this national issue, one piece of the puzzle is prioritization of tests. George Fox provides an interesting example of this: the university has stuck with in-person classes, and though its COVID protocols are not exactly exemplary, I have personally had two teachers have to miss class because of confirmed or suspected COVID. The first was able to get a test, but the second—whose illness came on after the most recent guidance on testing—couldn't, despite being sick. 

As always in the pandemic, we're balancing between safety and normalcy. However, if the goal is to keep as much safe normalcy as possible, it seems that this professor should have been able to get a test, as their absence due to illness left their students missing class, but the plan seems to be to come back as soon as possible rather than wait for them to quarantine. This kind of situation shows that there are possible exceptions to the rules around COVID testing, as some people's inability to test affects a greater number of other people. Though this example is specific to George Fox, I'm sure examples of this exist in the community at large. 

COVID testing—and knowing whether you've been exposed to someone who was infected—is vital if we want to even try to contain the pandemic. And though it is of course most important to know how to treat those who are harder hit by illness, other factors should affect test prioritization.

Writing 310 Blog Post 1

This is an assignment for the Professional Writing class I'm taking. The description was: "Find an email, a social media post, or a portion of a document you have written within the last few months that you would be willing to share on your blog. Post the email or portion of a longer piece on your blog, scrubbing it of any identifying features. Next, analyze YOUR posted document by looking at the document’s purpose, audience, stakeholders, and context."

For this assignment, I chose an email that I sent for my job at the Crescent last semester:

Hello!

My name is Aidan and I’m a reporter for the Crescent. I’m emailing you on the recommendation of (other source) about (an article about an event taking place) this weekend. 

Since you (have a central role in the story,) I think people would love to hear some of your thoughts on (the story.) 

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to do an in-person interview because my schedule is pretty packed this week. However, I’d appreciate it if you’d be willing to share your thoughts via email.

Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send some questions along. I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Aidan Arthur

In this email, my purpose was to obtain an interview via further emails, and eventually to publish an article in the student paper. I succeeded in this, via a lengthy response to eight follow-up questions. This, along with other reporting, helped me finish my article. 

The audience in this document was a source closely involved in the story I was reporting who became a main voice in the article. The source's contact information was given to me by another person, as I mention in the email. Understanding the audience is usually an important consideration in professional writing, but in this case context was more important, as I explain below—partly because I didn't know this person. Understanding the context in which this communication was received gave me a minimal understanding of the source at the moment at which they got it, though not as a whole.

The stakeholders included me (as my job depends on meeting deadlines and putting out stories,) the student paper (as the editors were interested in publishing this story,) and (tenuously) the public who may have been interested in the story. Assuming that the source was actively interested in being featured, as their lengthy response seems to indicate, they may also have been a stakeholder.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this email is the context. I couldn't have known where my source would be reading the email, but some other elements of the context were important in crafting this email. Firstly, I knew that the source would be opening an email from an unknown address, which is why I led with an explanation of my job and how I got his email address. Secondly, due to the nature of this story I knew that the source would likely be busy that week—as was I—which was a contributing factor to the brevity of the email as well as my explanation that an email interview would be more convenient. Similarly, I didn't include questions in the primary email, because I thought it might come off as overwhelming or overbearing. Instead, I proposed a secondary email in my last paragraph.