Advice For Students Next Semester

I really enjoyed Angie's Business Writing Class. She taught us so much about business writing and I am sure I will use this information once entering the teaching profession. In this course, we learned how to write resumes, write different types of letters, and how to do a client based project. The client based project is the biggest assignment you will have in the class. For this project, I recommend getting a good group that you think you could work with well to accomplish the tasks. If you get a group that cares about the project, then it makes the semester much easier. I had a good group! I recommend that you and your group work very hard on the proposal for your second portfolio! If you do this, then you will just have to make small corrections to the proposal to put in portfolio 3. When all of your other classes will be getting crazy, this class will be almost completed.

I advise you to do all of your assignment, including your blogs. These are simple grades, but you must do them in order to get credit. You should not be lazy when it comes to these types of assignments, because you want all the daily grade credit you can get. The blogs are usually on topics covered in class and Angie just wants you to write a small refection on the information. If you have listened in lecture or have read the powerpoints, you should do great at blogging.

Angie is a great person and I am sure you will enjoy her as an instructor. She makes class very interesting and has some great tips to prepare you for entering the business world. I hope you will enjoy this course as much as our Business Writing class did!

Ethics Research

The other week our class spent time discussing ethical lapses. We learned about what they are and Angie showed us an example of an ethical lapse. The example she showed was a letter written during the time of the Holocaust. Throughout the letter the writer used terms that referred to the bodies of people being killed, but did so in such a way that no one would have known that he was talking about bodies. The writer probably wrote like this for fear that someone would find the letter and he would get in trouble. Also, he probably did not want to accept the horrible things he was doing.

Our class was told to get a partner and discuss an ethical lapse on our own. Johnsie and I started looking at different events that have taken place around the world. We finally found an ethical lapse that deals with the Challenger explosion. The ethical lapse with the Challenger deals with the O-rings and the engineers deciding to take off even though the challenger was not in proper condition to launch. We had a difficult time finding memos that talked about the explosion. We think we have found one now to share with the class on Monday about our ethical lapse.

Response to Ethical Lapses Article

I found this article to be very interesting. I was appauled at all of the statistics and percentages throughout the article. I can not believe that 73% of full-time employed Americans have encountered ethical lapses on the job. It says that 36% have been distracted by these ethical lapses. A job can be stressful enough without additional incidents such as these taking place! I also found it interesting when the article say only 36% of Americans report unethical behavior in the work place. I can definitely see the reasons why some people may not feel comfortable reporting such behaviors. Some companies probably have failed in telling their employees ways to report these unethical behaviors to management. Some people may feel that reporting specific cases will cause more drama and distractions in the workplace. Other people probably simply do not feel comfortable with getting involved. I can not imagine this type of thing taking place and my workplace and me not reporting it. It is a shame that certain situations in the workplace can cause a person to feel so distracted that they can not do their job accurately. Hopefully companies will start seeing the problems and begin showing their employees how to handle these types of situations when they take place.

Writing on the Web vs. Writing on Paper

Writing on the web and writing on paper have a lot of the same characteristics. In both styles the author's voice and opinion come across to the audience. Naturally, the author will have a specific goal he or she is trying to communicate to the audience. Whether the web or paper document is an argumentative piece or a persuasive piece there is some message being presented along with a substantial amount of information. Both of these types of documents need to be organized and not contain grammatical or spelling errors. The most important thing for both types of pieces is for them to be proofread.

Writings on the web need to be very concise. The audience also needs to be able to navigate easily through the document. In other words the author needs to be able to get the main idea of the document in the first few sentences. The hyperlinks should enhance the reader's ability to fully understand the presented information. Writings on the web should also contain white space so that the reader will be more interested in the document. Writings on paper need to be more formal and require extensive organization. Unlike writings on the web, writings on paper do not need all of the white space within the piece. Writings on paper also do not need to explain the main idea in the first part of the piece.

When transferring a document on paper to the web, it is important for the document to be formatted correctly. The author must also take into account how the reader will view the document. If all possible, the author must take into consideration what type of computer or technology the audience will view the document on, so that it will not change from how the author views it. To solve any formatting issues, I suggest that the author transfer the paper document to a PDF file before before putting it on the web.

I hope that by having this class, I will be more confident about writing on the web and writing formally on paper.