Thursday, June 30, 2005
A day in the life of a tech writing intern
Everybody keeps asking me what it is that I do, so I decided to give a quick run-down hour by hour for you.
A day in the life of a tech writing intern:
8:00-8:30
Morning emails, covert typing of later blog entry
9:00-10:30
Note taking for exec meeting. Obviously, I can't go into details
about what's discussed in the meetings, so you don't get a sample of
the document either. It's just filling out a predesigned template with
the major points of what everyone's saying, as fast as possible so
nothing's missed. Good morning, typing exercize!
Actually, rule #1 might be "know the English Language and know it
well." We'll call this rule #1.1.
10:30- 12:30
Surprise Tech team meeting! I'm pulled into the conference room oon my way back to my desk and asked to take more notes as the technical-minded
members of the team pick at all the little things.
12:30 - 3:00
After realizing the tech team meeting isn't winding down, lunch gets
combined with the meeting. I take more notes and come to a little
better understanding of some of the finer details of our system.
3:00 - 4:00
Go through the meeting notes and pull out "action items" (things that
other people will have to do) and "issues" (things that we'll have to
figure out then make someone else do). It's more of an administrative
thing than actual "tech" writing, but rule #1 is always be flexible.
Especially when you're an intern.
4:00-4:30
This is where the only actual "technical" writing (in the most
technical sense of the word) happened. I work on my ongoing project
developing an expense tracker spreadsheet using
actual development is not really tech writing, it almost feels like
programming, but the help file that I'm writing today for it is. I
explain how to use the sheet I've created, realize I need to fix some
things on the sheet, wrap up a draft of the document, and go home.
And that's pretty much how my day goes. In a tech writing job I might
spend a day on what I spent 30 minutes on, but as an intern I'm doing
a little bit of everything. Which is fine by me. It's getting my typing speed up. ¶ 0 comments
A day in the life of a tech writing intern:
8:00-8:30
Morning emails, covert typing of later blog entry
9:00-10:30
Note taking for exec meeting. Obviously, I can't go into details
about what's discussed in the meetings, so you don't get a sample of
the document either. It's just filling out a predesigned template with
the major points of what everyone's saying, as fast as possible so
nothing's missed. Good morning, typing exercize!
Actually, rule #1 might be "know the English Language and know it
well." We'll call this rule #1.1.
10:30- 12:30
Surprise Tech team meeting! I'm pulled into the conference room oon my way back to my desk and asked to take more notes as the technical-minded
members of the team pick at all the little things.
12:30 - 3:00
After realizing the tech team meeting isn't winding down, lunch gets
combined with the meeting. I take more notes and come to a little
better understanding of some of the finer details of our system.
3:00 - 4:00
Go through the meeting notes and pull out "action items" (things that
other people will have to do) and "issues" (things that we'll have to
figure out then make someone else do). It's more of an administrative
thing than actual "tech" writing, but rule #1 is always be flexible.
Especially when you're an intern.
4:00-4:30
This is where the only actual "technical" writing (in the most
technical sense of the word) happened. I work on my ongoing project
developing an expense tracker spreadsheet using
actual development is not really tech writing, it almost feels like
programming, but the help file that I'm writing today for it is. I
explain how to use the sheet I've created, realize I need to fix some
things on the sheet, wrap up a draft of the document, and go home.
And that's pretty much how my day goes. In a tech writing job I might
spend a day on what I spent 30 minutes on, but as an intern I'm doing
a little bit of everything. Which is fine by me. It's getting my typing speed up. ¶ 0 comments
