Allison M. Shapira

Monday, October 29, 2007

Business or Creative Writing? A Case in Point

Interesting dynamics from my "Writing for Business Professionals" class tonight. It's sitting on my mind and I need to let it out.

Despite the title of the course, the class has dealt more with creative writing than business writing. I haven't minded because the readings are interesting and I know that, more or less, being a better creative writer will help me become a better writer, period. I overlook the fact that the only business writing we have dealt with is how to edit someone else's letter or email.

However, tonight we were given the assignment of writing a research paper on some random topic that we came up with during our in-class brainstorming session, without any focus on real-world application. This brainstorming session produced such topics as the history of the high heel and the pop-tart.

In the last 10 minutes of the class, the instructor said the paper should be 5-10 pages, due next week. This is in addition to the 150 pages of creative reading to do for next week, in addition to the outline of our final project due next week. In addition to the writing project we are doing for our outside organizations. And meanwhile I'm flying to Florida from Friday - Sunday to perform a wedding.

I realize that to the business school student, this may seem trivial. But we're talking about an awful lot of work for something that is only loosely related to business writing. If the assignment were to write a case study, I would understand. To write a business plan, I would understand. But to pull out all the stops for a research paper when my business writing class is teaching me neither case studies nor business plans, and I start to rethink my investment in the class. Our class is already reeling from our final project, which is basically to write a reality TV show that talks about the different writing styles we've learned in class, such as freewriting or brainstorming. Wait, when do I learn how to write a business plan?

Thoughts? I would love to hear other people's feedback as to how I can make this research paper relevant to my business writing. Help me find the silver lining!

Thanks for letting me vent.

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