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It was the summer of 1991 when my family finally broke down to the technology age and bought our first computer. It was a Packard Bell that came with all the essentials for a first-time computer user, including some free trial hours to America Online. This was just around the time that the internet was becoming popular and I couldn’t wait to “surf the net” as the saying goes. As it turned out, all that I ended up doing with the computer was “chat” my life away. I would stay online for hours on end, participating in meaningless chatter with friends that I had just seen at school that same day or with people that I had no interest in ever meeting. Needless to say, our first computer seemed to be a big waste of my parents’ money except when the occasional class paper was due. I was a pro at typing my papers up on the computer but I was clueless in how to make the printer work. To tell the truth, I think I was really afraid to explore the potential of the computer so I remained pretty ignorant with it. August 1999, I got a part-time job on campus in the Office of Instructional Resources. I was just a student assistant that answered the front desk phones so there really was no need for me to be very computer savvy. However, this job turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I had been in college for two years and still, I was floundering around without a major field of study. After trying English-Creative Writing unsuccessfully, I was sampling the major of criminal justice when I got this job. Criminal justice was interesting enough but I did not have a passion for it. At the office while answering the phones I had the opportunity to become very familiar with certain computer programs like, MS Word, MS Excel, MS Publisher, and MS PowerPoint which I simply played around with and taught myself. There was also a Graphic Design department within the office; they worked on among other things, signs, brochures and fliers. Occasionally, they would ask me to edit their work or help them mount signs, I became very interested in this work and this is when I stumbled into the major of English-Technical Writing. The very next fall I engulfed myself into the major. My first required class was Theory & Practice of Tech Writing. In this class, I was paired up with a senior, journalism major and a junior, biology major. Together we performed the task of creating a “Darkroom Safety Guide” and a “Yearbook Production Manual” for Trinity Prep. High School. We quickly discovered our areas of expertise and to my surprise; I was the best at designing the layout and introducing visuals to our project. The next semester, I enrolled into Technical Documentation I. The entire class objective was to produce a writing style manual for the UCF community. In doing this, some of us were asked to volunteer for certain leadership positions in the class. I did not intend to volunteer for any of the editor positions because I did not consider myself qualified but when no one volunteered for the Technical/Design Editor position, I reluctantly changed my mind. Throughout the semester my skills were put to the test and again I was shocked that I knew more technically than the other two technical/design editors. I also learned that I like designing page layout and nit-picking over things so that they look right and uniform. Arriving where I have today, from those early days as a Technical Writing major, has been a long, strange trip. I am currently surviving my senior year at UCF and looking forward to a rewarding career in my field. |