Thursday, August 14, 2008

Letter From a Former Student

Dr. R.,

I wanted to write you an e-mail because I just had a great work experience and have you to credit for it.

At my internship, I told one of the managers I have an interest in editing and she proceeded to give me a few writing samples to edit. I had a meeting today with the writer, who is himself an editor for his department, and he praised and complimented the work I did. He commented that I was able to eliminate needless words (concision) and was surprised I noticed that some of his figures were inconsistent (always check the math).

I told him about a lot of the exercises we did in class, and he wanted me to pass along praise to you for teaching us all that you did.

While I realize I am tooting my own horn a bit here, I wanted to let you know that all the exercises and activities we did are extremely helpful for what I am doing now. If any of your students ever ask why they have to do them, simply tell them you never know when you're going to need to use that skill in the real world – I certainly never thought the editing exercises done in class would be as similar as writings I am doing in the big, bad corporate world.