Path to Fellow is a recurring feature here on STC’s Notebook to highlight the rich contributions of our honored members. We want to tell your story! If you’re a Fellow or Associate Fellow and would like to participate in this feature, please email Kevin Cuddihy.
My Society-level service began in 2004 when STC cancelled its Region 8 Conference. Scheduled to speak at that conference, I was disappointed but not deterred and decided to take my presentation to the STC 52nd Annual Conference in Seattle, but then my flight getting there was delayed. As a speaker, I did not want to miss any important information, so when I finally got there I tracked down the orientation speaker, Phylise Banner, who filled me in on what I missed. She “took me under her wing” for the rest of the conference and later asked me if I wanted to serve on the program advisory committee for a future conference, which I said yes for 2008. I have continued to be active at the Society level ever since.
This is a lesson of how thwarted plans proved beneficial. If the Region 8 conference occurred, I probably would not have been so inclined to attend a Society-level conference. And, if the flight arrived on time, I would have blended in at the speaker orientation along with all the other speakers and miss my friendship with Phylise.
I learned early in life that you get out of life what you put into it. To be the best technical communicator possible, I dove into the profession headfirst. Before my first STC conference, I already spoke at the chapter level on alternative writing careers and served in other professional organizations. When I saw an opportunity to share my expertise and speak at a chapter meeting on an obscure technical writing subject, such as case report forms design, I took it.
When Brian Lindgren, Fellow and member of the Associate Fellows nominating committee, called me to tell me I was now an AF, he explained the contributing factors to my success: Speaking to first-time attendees at the Summit shows that I have a servant attitude towards the Society. My service to the Boy Scouts and other community organizations shows a commitment to volunteerism and civic responsibility. I also made myself accessible to people at events such as the Summit and showed a continued willingness to be involved in STC activities.
In 2001, I attended the STC Touchstone awards brunch where John Hedtke spoke on how to be famous in your profession. He later published it in Intercom (March 2006), but I wrote his points down on the back of my program and took them to heart. Consistent with his speech is another nugget I learned in life: It is not just what you know. It is who you know and who knows you. Networking and really listening to people have opened doors for me. A former coworker posted this note in her cube, “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I am not perfect in any of this, but I always try to do my best to listen to people and help where I can.
When people notice that I do a good job on a presentation or on a volunteer assignment, I do not always have to seek opportunities. They seek me. For example, because I had high speaker ratings for a forms design session at the STC conference, STC asked me to present it again as a webinar. When I was a competition judge, one of the judges on my team, Lu Rehling, was a technical writing professor. She was setting up a panel of practitioners at her school and asked me to be on it to speak to students.
In my case, I did not have to be an expert at any one thing. I just did a lot of “little things” for the profession and the Society for a long time. In addition to the above, I also wrote articles for Intercom, edited a newsletter for my church, served on different STC committees, took pictures at the STC Summit and shared them, and won a few writing competition awards.
Not everything I tried was successful. My application to be a competition judge at the international level was declined the first year I applied. Two of my STC competition entries did not win awards. I proposed a new STC membership level, which has not happen due to the budget. However, Vince Lombardi said, “It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.” I am up and moving.
I started my career as a clinical forms designer and later moved into a technical writing job. I have been in the pharmaceutical/medical industry for 23 years and enjoy what I do. The profession and STC have changed much during those years, and I try to remain flexible and adaptable to change with them.