After writing out all of my “canon events” from my pre-college days, I really thought I was gonna continue on with another list and talk about some of the influential things that happened during college. And there are several key things that happened during my four years that I could expound on at length, and perhaps at one point, I will do just that, but as part of my work with the Missouri Workers Center on the No MO Dirty Data Centers Campaign, I met with a cohort who told me “I appreciate having someone like you. The way you’re able to explain things and data centers is a great boon.”

And that’s reassuring to hear on a number of fronts. But it got me thinking about the [WHY] of it all. I’ve talked a lot about the [HOW] of it all. The careful house of cards that led me to my current career as a technical writer. But in the telling of that story, I also have left an equally important one that does explain the [WHY] of it all, at least in conjunction with the fact that I am at least always partially motivated by pure spite.

Embedded in this tale of being a budding biomedical engineering major due to the wanting to merge my father’s and mother’s careers is I think the kernel of [WHY].

Intro to BME at Washington University was a brutal course. The homework was esoteric and basically necessitated study groups and the sharing of legacy notes. The lectures covered a gamut of topics that were transmuted into increasingly difficult exams. I was doing so hot in that particular class, but the one saving grace is that there was a paper. And given that I had managed to test out of the infamous Writing 1 class (which in hindsight, is an incredibly dumb thing that my alma mater did) due to a 5 in the AP English Language (and a less impressive 4 on the English Lit, but I did not study for that one and my high school in fact paid for me to take it to pad their numbers), I felt like I could write.

I knew if I wanted to salvage my grade, I’d have to write. I was very excited about nanotechnology, so that was my topic of choice and I worked hard on this paper. I even went so far to pull an all nighter week’s before the paper was actually due 1) mostly to have the experience of having pulled an all-nighter and 2) trying to invest as much focus and dedication into getting the baseline content written that I could refine. By the time the deadline came around, I was proud of this paper.

Which meant that the D I got on the paper stung, although not as much as the “terrible. I take it you’re not a native speaker.”

I have several mantras.

“I’m good at what I do.” “I’m not wrong.” “I’m tired, but it’s a good tired.”

I think all of them stem from this particular reaction of being told that my paper was not just “not good” but actively bad probably incidentally inspired several of them in a weird ripple effect.

I talked to a student writing aide to see if I was just off base, and she read the paper and said “it’s written fine. I’m not sure what the professor was talking about.” I probably should have taken it to a professor as well, but that was enough to sooth my indignation and I scheduled time to discuss with the professor who graded. I stated my case and I can’t remember the exact resolution, but I did end up with a C in the class and the want to never take another BME class ever again.

Funnily enough, years later, I would take a 400 level course in the Mechanical Engineering department on nanotechnology. I used my freshman year paper as the foundation and I ended up acing that paper which felt like a nice full circle moment.

But looking back now, that red pen, that “I take it you’re not a native speaker,” that disconnect… I think that’s why I’m a tech writer. The dual want to understand and want to be understood. The recognition that comes in a perfect transference of knowledge and meaning.

I am broadly versed in many things. I think in systems. In cause and effect. I think in flow diagrams, and I know enough to make conversation in any arena that does not require extensive encyclopedic recall. I think the reason why I’m a technical writer is because I have never felt more distraught than when I couldn’t convey my passion and expertise on a topic and I have inadvertently spent a lot of time getting very good at both of those things.

Kurt Vonnegut, bless his soul, has a quote about technical writers that I do not agree with.

Technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers…

And perhaps there is some truth to that in the corporate world. The documentation I write does not have my name attached to it. There is no overt personality.

But in an age of “AI”, where companies keep trying to replace people with LLMs, you can fucking tell when I wrote something and when a machine is badly butchering my words.

I’m good at what I do because I have spent years getting good at what I do. And I love writing and teaching and teaching others how to write, which is to say, I love helping people understand and to be understood, and I don’t know. As this year marches on, I’m clinging to this value of competency above all because if I don’t, I’m not sure what the point of it all is.

Tune in next week for a mixtape and the week after for media.