In that moment as I stood in front of my professor, I knew I was over-committing. He offered me the opportunity to work on a professional client project. This specific client was the nursing department at Cedarville University, and I would be creating a template for their quarterly newsletter.
I knew I had little time, but it was for things I love doing. I struggled with what to cut from my busy schedule to make time for my new endeavor. My final solution: I cut none of them. Committing to a client project probably wasn’t the wisest thing I’ve done, but Professional Writing and Information Design (PWID) has offered me so many opportunities to hone my craft. How could I turn them away?
You may be wondering–what are these overflowing opportunities I speak of? My PWID experiences apart from classes started with an internship with the Information Technology department at Cedarville. It sort of fell into my lap (networking, am I right?), so I couldn’t turn it down.
As their technical writer for the summer, I worked on presentations, helped in the office, wrote website content, and generally learned how to work in a professional environment. The internship was a learning experience that turned into a campus job at the end of the summer. And it looks great on my resume.
So I knocked out an internship, got a job, and moved on to the next PWID adventure: being the social media manager. (Manager is a great resume word if I’ve ever heard one.) Though I was worried it would be too much to handle with everything else on my plate, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Since social media is another element of PWID, I felt like it would broaden my experiences and help me narrow my career interests. As the social media manager, I help plan posts for the major’s Facebook page and come up with new ideas to keep the content interesting, which allows me to have fun and work on the creative side of my writing.
Well, we’ve come full circle. I said yes to my professor and committed to completing the client project. That’s right, folks, a friend and I wrote for a real client with real expectations. We scheduled meetings and worked under deadlines like real, out-of-college writers. I accepted this PWID opportunity knowing that it would be challenging to juggle but a chance to try something new and broaden my ever-growing writing scope.
Other majors probably offer some ways to get involved, but I doubt they have such a broad scope of opportunities available to every student like PWID does. All you have to do is ask, and there’s even a good chance the professors will ask you! Even if I didn’t fall in love with every project, I still had the chance to try it out and expand my writing abilities. I know that when I graduate, I can approach my first job with confidence and actual experience under my belt. So, I advise you: never turn down an opportunity (even if you know you’re overcommitting).
