Term Paper on "Interview Was Eric Salavatcioglu, a Good Friend"

Term Paper 5 pages (1500 words) Sources: 0 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

interview was Eric Salavatcioglu, a good friend of mine, who has occupied his position at Goodrich Aerospace for slightly less than one year. Approximately twenty percent of his working day at Goodrich Aerospace -- where is official working title is Customer support specialist, level 1 -- is spent doing various types of writing. He holds a degree in computer engineering from San Diego State University. Salavatcioglu's parents helped him attain his current position; since they had both already been employed by Goodrich Aerospace, it was simply a matter of them handing his resume to the right people.

Since the interviewee was a close friend, the interview itself was conducted at his house and was very casual in nature. To convince him to aid me in this assignment, I bought him a six-pack of beer. After this agreement, Salavatcioglu was more than happy to provide all the information regarding his current position and how he got there.

Salavatcioglu's writing is largely in email form. However, he stresses that even this type of written communication is essential to the overall functioning of the firm he works in -- and indeed, any firm. One of the more challenging features of the written portion of his job is that he routinely needs to alter his writing style, depending upon the particular audience he is writing for. Salavatcioglu writes for customers, coworkers and management. Because of this, he must always be very conscious of the level of technical information within any piece of writing that he creates. For coworkers and management, the level of technical material included in his righting can remain fairly high; yet when writing to customers, this must be deliberately diminished, and alternative ways of conveying the same information must sometimes be devised. When writing specifically to coworkers, he notes, his writing does not need to be as formal as in other instances.

The fundamental basis of a properly functioning organization is good communication -- this is perhaps the most significant lesson that I have learned regarding the importance of writing. Of course, when most people enter into engineering or the physical sciences, written communication is rarely regarded as the basic building-block of science and engineering that it is.

However, no one runs an engineering firm by his or herself. Everyone occupies an individual role and is responsible for a unique set of information and possesses a unique set of responsibilities. This means that no single person can be in possession of all of the information within the firm at any given time; furthermore, no one is even capable of knowing what it going-on just down the hall from them without proper communication. Ultimately, this is why writing skills are an invaluable asset within any workplace; yet, it just so happens that skilled writers are relatively rare among the engineering community. This is why focused attention among engineers and scientists to the craft of writing is receiving ever-increasing attention within organizations that recognize its elemental role in the process of good and efficient business.

Nevertheless, from Salavatcioglu, I have learned that even if an individual enjoys the process of writing, and communicating with coworkers, management or customers in such a way, it may often be the case that the writer is not regularly proud of the finished product. Salavatcioglu noted that although many of the memos and emails he sends are meticulously organized and worded, the final product often betrays very little of this complicated process to the audience. He points out that even a very brief memo, depending upon who he is writing to, could take him much of his working day to put together. There is a long process of outline, writing and revision to transform complex engineering material into something understandable to someone not within that area of expertise. Still, once the piece of writing is complete, he says, it is highly unlikely that the reader realizes the level of input that was required to create something readable. Consequently, Salavatcioglu says that he has very few pieces of writing from his time at Goodrich Aerospace that he is overly proud of; they seem to lack significant levels of creativity, though they certainly involved knowledge and skill.

Another major lesson that I have taken away from this experience is that, although Salavatcioglu does not feel that he writes more than other engineers, he sill believes that writing is a very important facet of his position. This suggests that almost anyone occupying an engineering position will be thrown into an environment in which writing is of crucial value. Of course, this is whether or not he or she has acquired writing skills in their college or high school education. As a result, many engineers enter the field with little or no actual writing experience; and they are forced to learn these skills as they go. Accordingly, this suggests that college engineering and science courses focusing upon technical or science communication could be very valuable to current and future engineers.

Salavatcioglu stressed that the writing skills he attained during his years in college turned-out to be somewhat irrelevant to his current position. After all, most college English and communications courses focus upon a student's ability to write essays. However, in the working world, essays are not a common form of communication. Salavatcioglu states that his high school writing courses, more than anything else, came the closest to preparing him for the level of writing his current position requires. This is because they taught the fundamentals of letter-writing. The writing examples he provided for me to analyze reveal the importance of letter-writing when attempting to express certain types of information to a narrow audience -- such as customers or coworkers.

One obvious feature of Salavatcioglu's writing -- and this is apparent even in his emails -- is that the information within it is always very dense. This means that although a memo or email might be only a few sentences long, there is a very high amount of information within it. Most likely, this is a reflection of two things: first, that Salavatcioglu has spent a significant amount of time in organizing the memo so that it is brief, readable, but still communicates the essential information; and second, that writing within an engineering firm is filled with terminology and references that can only be understood fully within the context of an individual firm.

Another persistent trait of Salavatcioglu's writing is the comparatively simple sentence structure and language -- aside from any technical terminology -- that is used. This is likely to be a deliberate choice on his part. In this way, it is very similar to journalistic writing, in which vocabulary and sentence simplicity is stressed with the overall goal of clarity. Naturally, clarity in writing to coworkers, customers and management is the preeminent goal of professional writing. So, the straightforwardness of Salavatcioglu's writing is probably one of his greatest strengths as a writer of technical information.

Yet another apparent characteristic of Salavatcioglu's writing is that, although it is not always formal in the strictest sense, it is consistently cordial and even-keeled. In other words, he is never berating to his coworkers; he is always respectful of their work and activities, even if he is criticizing something that they have done. Essentially, the tone of his writing, and all writing in the professional setting, is very important to the way in which his audience receives and understands the information.

Overall, this assignment has taught me that even when you are entering into a field of work that does not stress the importance of written communication on the academic level, writing will almost universally be a part of your job, and may occupy a significant portion of your day-to-day routine. In electrical engineering, so much of one's time in school is centered… READ MORE

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