Shifting Voice In New Writing Spaces Assignment

Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels and disciplines.

Context: This assignment focuses on recognizing the shift in rhetorical strategies when writing within different media and writing spaces, particularly within academic, professional, and online modes.

Assignment:

It’s natural for us to change how we speak to different audiences within different contexts – the diction and tone of how we’d talk to a good friend is different from how we’d address an employer, a professor, a grandparent, etc. However, when we are asked to make the same shifts in our writing voices, many of us struggle to adapt to varying audiences. In the AWWE interview with a Content Manager and Contributing Editor for a lifestyle blog, we hear about how many of us learn to write a specific kind of “college” academic writing in school, but sometimes struggle to write engagingly and authentically in less formal spaces:

I’ve done so much academic writing my entire education and most of my career , it’s really hard for me to be conversational in writing and […] lot of the comments that I get in terms of edits [are to] actually make this less stuffy? How can we make it less academic sounding, how can we make it sound less boring ? You know how can we make it seem like you’re talking to your friend? And I really struggle with that. […] But it’s a totally different kind of writing than I’m used to. So you know I have trouble grasping that part of it. Like, you know it’s it’s very informal writing, I should say . It’s conversational, you know, there’s –you know, abbreviations and, and […] little phrases that people, the kids, nowadays use. But then, it’s like, you know, for me it’s like well can I take it as seriously as I take say the [New York] Times of The Atlantic or something like that? Like what –you know, what’s real and what’s better? And there is no better really. It’s more in terms of you know are you able to write for your audience?

For this assignment, you will select three writing sources related to your discipline. One will be a scholarly journal article, one will be a trade magazine or professional blog article, and the third will be a top post on a subreddit related to your field. For example, in Psychology, you might select the scholarly journal Developmental Psychology; for your trade magazine article source, you may visit Psychology Today Magazine, and for a subreddit source, you may visit a top post on r/psychology. If you are interested in a field like Finance, you might instead opt for visiting The Journal of Corporate Finance, Forbes Magazine, and r/personalfinance, respectively. Note: for the reddit post, you should choose a top rated post (sort by Top) in the sub’s history and also read some of the most upvoted comments. This is one metric we can use to determine “effectiveness” or success of writing in that mode.

Next, for each of these three sources, you will be asked to analyze the tone and style of writing that is generally accepted within each of these writing spaces.

Consider:

Scholarly Journal

How would you describe the typical structure of an article/post here?
How would you describe the overall tone of the writing? Is it formal? Informal?
Do you notice any kind of specialized terms or jargon being used? If so, what are those terms?
Do you find this easy or enjoyable to read? Why or why not?
Who do you think the audience for this piece is? How can you tell? Are there any words/ideas expressed here that you don’t understand?
What do you think about the author (who they are, their interests and qualifications) based on the way that they’ve written this piece?

Trade Journal

How would you describe the typical structure of an article/post here?
How would you describe the overall tone of the writing? Is it formal? Informal?
Do you notice any kind of specialized terms or jargon being used? If so, what are those terms?
Do you find this easy or enjoyable to read? Why or why not?
Who do you think the audience for this piece is? How can you tell? Are there any words/ideas expressed here that you don’t understand?
What do you think about the author (who they are, their interests and qualifications) based on the way that they’ve written this piece?

Subreddit

How would you describe the typical structure of an article/post here?
How would you describe the overall tone of the writing? Is it formal? Informal?
Do you notice any kind of specialized terms or jargon being used? If so, what are those terms?
Do you find this easy or enjoyable to read? Why or why not?
Who do you think the audience for this piece is? How can you tell? Are there any words/ideas expressed here that you don’t understand?
What do you think about the author (who they are, their interests and qualifications) based on the way that they’ve written this piece?

Overall

What are the biggest differences you notice between this source and the other sources?
What are the biggest similarities (if any) that you notice?
What do you think is most important to consider when writing in formal contexts?
What do you think is most important to consider when writing in informal online contexts?

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Reflection Prompt: Emotion and Writing Process

Resources

Reflection Prompt: Emotion and Writing Process

Level: Developed for use with first-year writers.

Context: This short reflective prompt asks students to consider a quote from a writer in the archive in context with their own writing process.

Assignment:

It’s no surprise that significant research has been done about emotion and affect as they pertain to writing. Writing can be extremely emotional! One workplace writer in the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences, a former Grant Writer, says of her writing, “I agonized over it, but I was pleased with the result of my agony.”

A lot of writers feel this agony or something like it. For many, the writing process is one of ups and downs. Emotional hurdles—like fear of failure, frustration that the writing doesn’t seem to be “working,” and even, sometimes, boredom—are very real challenges for most writers, and ones we have to grapple with particularly as we develop as college writers. And yet, most of us ultimately hope to feel, as this Grant Writer did, as though the agony was worth it once we have a successful finished writing project.

Write about your own writing process and the emotions that tend to accompany it. How do you feel about writing? What sorts of feelings come up when you are assigned a writing project? Excitement? Fear? Dread? Curiosity? How do these feelings change (or not) as you plan, draft, and revise? Have you ever felt the “agony” this writer describes? Describe your most successful writing project. How did your emotions evolve along with the project? Do you have (or can you imagine) strategies to help you use your emotions effectively or usefully when it comes to your writing?

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Authenticity in Social Media Activity

Resources

Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels.

Context: This activity asks students to consider the concept of “authenticity” in social media writing, and in their writing more broadly. Through this activity, students will learn to identify and interpret writing “personas,” personal and business, as well as consider goals and purposes in online writing. It also asks students to grapple with their own online personas and representations. Instructors might ask start the conversation in class by asking students how they interpret the two quotes below. The individual writing and reflection piece can either take place immediately after this discussion in class or can be assigned as homework.

Assignment:

The topic of “authenticity” is one that troubles many writers, particularly those writing online. Two of the interviews in the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences mention the struggle of being “authentic” on social media:

A Freelance Illustrator states:

“I try to really write from the heart and connect with my audience, and along with that comes the writing that I do on Twitter and Instagram, both social media writing, but I try my best to be relatable and to be authentic instead of somebody that is just trying to sell herself. So I would say that is my most important writing, trying to forge a connection with another person just by being who I am, without manicuring myself.”

A Business Development Director at a creative agency explains that:

“…we all know what social media looks like, and we know what the popular people on social media post and the copy they write, and you just try to mimic something that looks and feels authentic to you, and is still obviously, you know, lighthearted.”

Considering the quotes above, as well as your own social media experience, answer the questions below:

What does the concept of “authenticity” on social media mean to you?

Why do you think these two writers place importance on trying to craft authenticity? Why is “achieving authenticity” challenging?

Many writers have an online writing “persona,” which may or may not represent them truthfully as they are in real life. How would you describe your own social media persona? What does your online persona’ life look like, and does it adequately represent your own? What does your persona care, as evidenced by how and why you post?

Businesses also, ideally, craft a “persona” related to their brand that they work to show consistently online. This persona may be formal and business-like or it may be more casual, appearing to interact “like a friend.” Find a brand that you follow or interact with on social media. How would you describe the “persona” of this organization? How did you come to that conclusion? (You might cite here language, tone, images, etc.)

Using this same organization’s feed, can you determine the audiences you think they’re trying to reach? How can you tell?

What purposes (yes, multiple!) do you think they’re working to achieve? What clues you in to these goals?

Would you say that the brand is “authentic” online? Why or why not?

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Social Media Analysis Assignment

Resources

Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels.

Context: This assignment focuses on social media, and on asking students to consider audience, purpose, and medium more specifically. This could be done as an in-class assignment, alone or in groups, or as a homework assignment.

Assignment:

Social media is a new writing genre that organizations have had to learn how to create in the past decade or so. Some do social media extremely well, and some, of course, really don’t. In the AWWE interview with a Director of Business Development at a creative agency, we hear a reflection about both the importance of social media and the fact that he feels the agency doesn’t designate adequate resources to it:

“I believe in the power of [social media], and I would even say that we should invest 100 times more in it than we do, but at this point, it’s meant to be like a fact checker, kind of like a check box. One, it’s just meant to show a little personality. If someone we’re already in conversation with us or in the early stages of vetting and they happen to likes Instagram and uses it heavily, if they were to check us out it’s visually engaging, it shows some personality, it’s consistently showing our brand, like we, it’s consistently designed, all which I do in an app in about five minutes a day. We show our culture a little bit, and it’s meant to be more smart sarcasm and wit, is kind of the energy and vibe that we give off outwardly, I don’t know if that’s necessarily like the type of people we are, but it’s usually energizing, it has a little bit of a wit to it. And when I’m writing, it’s pretty plain, you know, we’re leveraging some type of quotes, or writing about a client and keeping it short and sweet, and just really trying to boost people’s awareness in our active community of what that is, and then I think over time, it could lead to more organic reach. But it’s pretty straightforward, it doesn’t, I don’t have a ton of input, I think I’ve, we all know what social media looks like, and we know what the popular people on social media post and the copy they write, and you just try to mimic something that looks and feels authentic to you, and is still obviously, you know, lighthearted.”

Like many organizations, this interviewee’s company struggles to successful write for and utilize write social media. Summarize his perspective in answering the following questions:

How does the Director of Business Development view social media as it is currently used in his organization?

What types of posts does he currently write?

When he says he’s trying “to mimic something that looks and feels authentic,” what do you think he means?

The interviewee states that he mimics “what the popular people on social media post.” Many organizations do this—look to other, perhaps bigger or more successful organizations in their field—for inspiration and guidance for their online communications. To get a sense of how this is done and to learn to better analyze social media texts (and all texts), please follow the instructions below:

Choose an industry you’re interested in, either personally or professionally. (You might choose, for instance, the industry of yoga, restaurants, banking, or aerospace).

Within your chosen industry, choose two different organizations that have an overlapping social media presence. (Meaning that they utilize at least one of the same platforms; they’re both on Twitter or Facebook, for example.)

On the platform they both use, examine their social media presence over the past month to two months and answer the following questions:

For organization #1:

Describe the tone and language used.
Who do you think their audience or audiences are? How can you tell? What assumptions is the writer of the post making about their audiences?
What do you think their top two or three primary purposes are on social media? (For instance, they may be looking, first, to “sell,” but they might also want to display themselves as an “organization who cares,” or as a particularly reliable brand.)
Find a post that you think is particularly successful or unsuccessful. Describe the post and why you think it succeeded or failed (be sure to contextualize this with the audiences and purposes you note above.)

For organization #2:

Describe the tone and language used.
Who do you think their audience or audiences are? How can you tell? What assumptions is the writer of the post making about their audiences?
What do you think their top two or three primary purposes are on social media? (For instance, they may be looking, first, to “sell,” but they might also want to display themselves as an “organization who cares,” or as a particularly reliable brand.)
Find a post that you think is particularly successful or unsuccessful. Describe the post and why you think it succeeded or failed (be sure to contextualize this with the audiences and purposes you note above.)

Which organization do you think is more successful in achieving their purposes and reaching their target audiences? Why?

What advice would you give the less successful organization?

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Professional Documents Assignment Sequence

Assignments, Resources

Note: Instructors can ask students to follow this entire four-part sequence or jump to specific assignments within the sequence:

Resume
Writing Samples
Basic Personal-Professional Website
Summary and Reflection

For this assignment series, you will create a collection of professional documents that you could use in your future job searches. You will complete each of the assignments below over the

course of our semester.

Resume

Whether you already have a version of a resume or you are building one for the first time, this professional document can be a challenge, but it is likely the single most important document you’ll write for your career—and one you’ll revise frequently for the rest of your professional life. (Note: We will discuss the genre of the resume in class.)

Steps:

Start by reading the Purdue OWL Resume Writing Workshop. Then find and read at least four additional credible online resources for resume writing.

Draft your resume, considering the advice you read, our class discussion, and any other samples you’ve seen. Think hard about the language, “look,” and layout of your resume as they relate to your goals. For instance, do you want to be a designer in some capacity? Your resume might look different from someone hoping to go into engineering. What does your ideal employer hope to find in an employee? In what ways can you demonstrate these skills? (Note: Down the line, you will likely have different versions of your resume for different job applications—each emphasizing those features of your skills and experiences most relevant to that particular job—but you should have one “general” version for your field. This is the one you’ll write here and use for your website below.)

Gather feedback on your document from at least two people. One should be a classmate from this class. The other might be a Writing Center consultant or—even better—a Career Services advisor, or they might be a professional in the field you wish to pursue.

Synthesize the feedback you received in a paragraph or two. (You’ll need this below!).

Consider what feedback is useful and what is less useful. Revise into a “final” version.

Writing Samples

Strong written communication skills are highly sought after in the professional world, and while many new graduates are preparedas writers, they often have trouble convincing potential employers of their writing skills for a simple reason: They don’t have appropriate writing samples. For this assignment, you must find (or create) three writing samples suitable to submit to a potential employer. There should be some variety in your samples. Including one piece of academic writing is fine (perhaps a history essay you’re particularly proud of, or a paper you wrote in for a political communications class), but the other two should be “professional,” as this is the type of writing employers are looking to see you demonstrate. Professional documents might include a proposal, some types of reports, memos, a formal letter, newsletters, organizational web writing, or others. (You should ask me if you’re not sure about a professional genre.) You absolutely may use revised work from this class as those professional writing samples if you think they represent your best work.

For each sample, you should write a brief “framing” sentence or two that provides an unfamiliar reader with some context about what it is they’re seeing. For example: “This is a press release about a new product launch that I had the opportunity to write in my 2019 internship at X company,” or “I wrote this set of instructions for a technical writing course in my third year of college. It demonstrates my ability to be clear, concise, and persuasive.”

Basic Personal-Professional Website

As new graduates, you should have a professional presence online. (This article—“Why Every Job Seeker Should Have a Personal Website, And What It Should Include”—does a good job at explaining why.) For this assignment, you will build this professional website for yourself.

How to Think About It
Your goal for this website is to obtain a job. I recommend building the site for your ideal post-graduation job, which means you’ll want to think about your dream (but still attainable) position and employer. You will write with this primary audience in mind. Read this article (“The Essential Components to a Great Personal Website”) to better understand why to build a personal professional website and how to approach it.

How to Build It
If you’ve never built a website, it might be a daunting task, but I promise it’s doable—and worth it! It’s important to be able to put together a very simple site for any number of professional reasons.

If you already know how to build a website, go at it! If not, I’d recommend using WordPress, which is a free and very easy to use simple site builder. You don’t need to know how to write code, and there are a variety of free templates available. There are about a million tutorials online, both from WordPress and from users, but I’d recommend starting with this one if it’s the first time you’re using it. If you get stuck, come see me and I’ll walk you through the basics! (And you only need the basics—I promise!) Please note that you are welcome to use another platform, but if you get stuck, I won’t be able to provide support.

What to Include
At a minimum, your site should include the following pages:

A Homepage – this should offer a welcome and some basic information about you. Most people also choose to include a picture, but this isn’t necessary if you’d rather not.

An “About” page – this page usually offers a brief summary of you as a professional and often a few appropriate personal details—think pets, hobbies, interesting facts.

A “Resume” page – this tab should link to a PDF of your final resume.

A “Writing Samples” or “Writing Portfolio” page – this is where you’ll upload and frame the samples you gathered and wrote above.

A “Contact” page – this should include, at a minimum, your email address and, if you have one, a LinkedIn account. If your other social media is appropriate (or particularly relevant to your job hunting), include those links too.

How to Improve it

Get feedback on your site from two people. At least one of these needs to be a professional who’s been in the workforce post-college for at least five years. The other could be a friend, a Writing Center consultant, a Career Services advisor, or a classmate. After both rounds of feedback, revise your site. Synthesize the feedback you received in a paragraph or two. (You’ll need this below!).

Summary and Reflection

Write a 2-3 page summary and reflection on your process and products from these professional development activities. At the top of your document, please include a link to your site. On the site, I should be able to view your revised resume and other deliverables noted above. At a minimum, in your summary and reflection, you should answer the following questions: How did you approach the resume piece—what steps did you take? Did you already have a version or did you start from scratch? What resources did you read as you began writing or your resume? How did you approach the formatting and style? What was challenging or easy about drafting it? Who did you receive feedback on your resume from? What kinds of advice did you gain from each? Who was your intended audience for your website? Who provided website feedback? In both cases, what did they say, and what pieces of advice did you follow (or not), and why? How did you choose (or create) your writing samples? In what ways do you think your documents are successful? What needs more work, and why? Do you anticipate keeping the site up to date and actually using it? (It’s okay if the answer is no!) What are the most important things you learned through this series of assignments? Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about the process or your final documents?

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Plain Text Act Assignment

Assignments, Resources

Level: Can be customized for writers at all levels.

This assignment focuses on writing and editing for concision and clarity, particularly in the context of “public” writing. In 2010, the U.S. government put into place the Plain Writing Act, which “requires that federal agencies use clear government communication that the public can understand and use.” You can listen to a federal government employee talk about this act and its impact on his writing at work here [link to excerpt from graphic design manager at unnamed agency]. For this assignment, you’ll explore the guidelines for government employees set out in this law, and then you’ll explore government documents with these guidelines in mind.

Read the guidelines (linked on the left of this page of the Plain Writing Act website).

Online, find two public government documents from two different government agencies. For instance, you might look at a report from the Department of Labor about women, trauma, and disability in the workforce. You could examine the State Department’s report on Global Food Security. Or you might choose to read about one of the many research initiatives at the National Institutes for Health (NIH). Any two federal documents will work.

Read your two documents and write a paragraph for each summarizing the content. What is this text about? What’s its purpose? Is it making an argument or is it simply informative? Who is the audience and how can you tell?

Then, critique the writing in your two documents in the framework of the Plain Writing Act. In what ways do the texts adhere to the act? Are there places that, perhaps, seem not to be written according to these guidelines? Provide examples in your (approximately 800-word) analysis.

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Major/Disciplinary Course Interview Project: Exploring a Specific Workplace Writing Situation

Assignments, Resources

Level: Upper-division Students in Major Courses (see variation for first-year students here)

Who to Interview?

Your interviewee should work in a field or job that is tied to your major—preferably in a job that you have at least some professional interest in joining post-college. Although you might know personally a seemingly great person to interview, I urge you to seek out someone you have not met in the past. The reason for this is twofold: First, if you already know them, you can ask them about their work any old time. Second, making new contacts in your desired field is always beneficial. You never know what might come of a great conversation. So, instead of interviewing a family friend, (even though interviewing him or her would be “easy”), try to expand your network. You should consider a “dream” interviewee based on your professional goals, and then use your current network to seek out professionals in that field or position. [Note to Professors: You should be prepared to offer advice for students who might need to “cold-email” a prospective interviewee. Also, an in-class networking conversation might help too. Just because Ann doesn’t know someone working her dream job, that doesn’t mean her classmate in the next row doesn’t. Allowing students to use one another as a network to seek out interviewees can do a lot of good.]

Preparing

In preparation for your interview, you should:

Contact your desired interviewee (as early as possible to allow for scheduling complexities!) in a professionally written email [Note to Professors: an in-class discussion aboutthis genre and examples will serve your students well here] and schedule a time to talk, either in person (preferably) or via Skype.

Listen to 2-3 interviews in the Archive (or read the transcripts). Make notes about what you learned that is relevant to you as a future workplace writer. What surprised you? What questions were the most interesting to you? What do you wish the writer had been asked?

Prepare your questions. Your questions do not have to align with the questions in the Archive, but they should get at the same types of concerns, including:
- Their job title, description, and primary duties
- An overview of the genres the writer creates in his or her position
- The writing process he or she follows
- How the writer believes they learned to write in their job, including strategies or other opportunities for development
- How he or she believes college writing prepared them (or not) to write in their current job, as well as what they wish they had learned or done as a student in order to better prepare

You should also feel free to ask other questions about the job that would help you envision yourself performing in it down the line. You should prepare approximately 8-10 open-ended questions.

Prepare your recording technology and test it. (Garage Band is a good option, and iPhone recordings are also fine!)

Post-Interview

Write a summary and analysis of your interview (approximately 1,500 – 2,000 words). Provide an overview of the significant points your interviewee made, using direct quotes when useful. (A good rule of thumb to determine when to summarize or paraphrase vs. when to quote is the question: Could I say it as well as they did? If not, use their language and quote them.) Then, consider your current preparedness to do the types of writing that your interviewee performs. Are you familiar with the genres of writing they described? How would you approach one of the less familiar forms if you were tasked with writing it? What’s complicated about the genre? What seems similar or familiar to other writing tasks you have completed in the past? What questions would you need to have answered in order to successfully tackle such writing? Are there specific things you believe you can or should do, based on your conversation with this writer, to best prepare yourself for your own eventual professional writing?

[Instructor Notes: Depending on your goals, you might consider asking students to transcribe their interview, or not. You might adjust the post-interview writing to better serve your specific course objectives, and you also ask students to present (in a formal manner or not) about their findings. If not, an in-class debrief would likely benefit the class and allow them to discuss not only their findings, but also their experiences. Finally, you might also choose to add or adjust the writing assignment below.]

Additional Post-Interview Writing Assignment [optional]: Comparison/Contrast Essay

Now that you’ve completed your interview with a workplace writer, you’ll write a comparison/contrast piece relating it to one of the other interviews in the archive. Your audience here is other first-year writing students who want to learn about the writing that takes place in two arenas and gain a better understanding of the complexities of such writing (as well as how to best prepare to complete it).

Ultimately what we’re most interested in here is how writing genres, processes, and rhetorical situations (goals and audiences of texts, at a basic level) are similar or not between jobs. You might choose to compare your interviewee’s experiences to a writer in a similar field in the archive, or you might choose a writer that’s very different. Both options could yield interesting results.

You’ll want to be as specific as possible in your analysis, and that means honing in on one or two elements of writing transfer that interest you here. There are many directions such a paper can go, and we want a focused comparison/contrast, not a rambling list of what one person said as opposed to another person. You might consider the following questions to help you narrow your focus:

What genres are the two writers working within? (More on genre here.) What makes them unique to this industry/organization/position? What’s complicated about them?
What audiences are the two writers writing to? How does this shape their writing?
What are the writers attempting to accomplish in their writing?
How are the writers’ processes similar or not? Are differences a product of organizational constraints/opportunities or are they more personal preferences?
How prepared was your interviewee to enter the workforce as a writer? What kinds of experiences did they have writing in college that effected this preparedness?

Finally, you don’t want to simply tell your reader what one writer said as opposed to another writer. You want to compare your area of interestbut also provide some insight and analysis about it, including how this audience of first-year students might begin to think about their own professional writing trajectory from the university to the workplace.

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First-Year Writing Interview Project: Exploring a Specific Workplace Writing Situation

Assignments, Resources

Level: First-year Writing Students (see variation for in-major students here)

In this assignment you will be conducting an interview of your own to learn more about the writing that happens in a specific workplace and position. You’ll conduct a brief (< ½ hour) interview, preferably in person, with a working professional, asking him or her about their writing and their development as a workplace writer. Just as the Archive explores writing in a variety of fields and positions, you can too; your interviewee can do any kind of professional work (they do not need to have “writer” in their title, since we all know that writing happens in all jobs!).

Who to Interview?

Who you interview is up to you, but of course the most beneficial interview will likely be one that is conducted with a writer in a field you have at least some professional interest in joining post-college. Although you might know personally a seemingly great person to interview, I urge you to seek out someone you have not met in the past. The reason for this is twofold: First, if you already know them, you can ask them about their work any old time. Second, making new contacts in your desired field is always beneficial. You never know what might come of a great conversation. So, instead of interviewing a family friend who works in a field you’re uninterested in (even though interviewing him or her would be “easy”), try to expand your network. You should consider a “dream” interviewee based on your professional goals, and then use your current network to seek out professionals in that field or position. [Note to Professors: An in-class networking call might help too. Just because Ann doesn’t know someone working the government, that doesn’t mean her classmate in the next row doesn’t. Allowing students to use one another as a network to seek out interviewees can do a lot of good.]

Preparing

In preparation for your interview, you should:

Contact your desired interviewee (as early as possible to allow for scheduling complexities!) in a professionally written email [Note to Professors: an in-class discussion aboutthis genre and examples will serve your students well here] and schedule a time to talk, either in person (preferably) or via Skype.

Listen to 2-3 interviews in the Archive (or read the transcripts). Make notes about what you learned that is relevant to you as a future workplace writer. What surprised you? What questions were the most interesting to you? What do you wish the writer had been asked?

Prepare your questions. Your questions do not have to align with the questions in the Archive, but they should get at the same types of concerns, including:
- Their job title, description, and primary duties
- An overview of the genres the writer creates in his or her position
- The writing process he or she follows
- How the writer believes they learned to write in their job, including strategies or other opportunities for development
- How he or she believes college writing prepared them (or not) to write in their current job, as well as what they wish they had learned or done as a student in order to better prepare

You should also feel free to ask other questions about the job that would help you envision yourself performing in it down the line. You should prepare approximately 8-10 open-ended questions.

Prepare your recording technology and test it. (Garage Band is a good option, and iPhone recordings are also fine!)

Post-Interview

Additional Post-Interview Writing Assignment [optional]: Comparison/Contrast Essay

What genres are the two writers working within? (More on genre here.) What makes them unique to this industry/organization/position? What’s complicated about them?
What audiences are the two writers writing to? How does this shape their writing?
What are the writers attempting to accomplish in their writing?
How are the writers’ processes similar or not? Are differences a product of organizational constraints/opportunities or are they more personal preferences?
How prepared was your interviewee to enter the workforce as a writer? What kinds of experiences did they have writing in college that effected this preparedness?

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