Business Prognosticating
Hopefully most of you will end up as highly-paid business professionals in your future careers. (Yes, much of the time it is about the money.) If you’re not highly paid, well, hopefully you’ll enjoy your job. If not that, well, the video games in the future are bound to be better and should provide you with a little escapism.
No matter where you end up, this task will give you one thing to look forward to in the future. As our final class task, I’m going to have you create a Career Forecaster.
What is a career forecaster?
Career Forecaster is a fancy name for making yourself a written time capsule. In this final classroom task, we are going to create an electronic time capsule which will carry your thoughts and ideas from today to your future self living 10 years in the future. Here’s how it works.
The idea of a time capsule is to preserve a record of today for people to look at years from now. You might have read about some time capsules that were created when we reached the new millennium. Time capsules often contain pictures and artifacts, such as clothing, jewelry, coins, and music. They also tend to include letters and written statements.
For our class you will be creating a time capsule by writing a detailed email describing you and your life today. We’ll then send that email off to be delivered to you 10 years from now (more about how we’ll manage that technological feat later!).
Sample Time Capsule
One good example of a time capsule is the one the New York Times Magazine created to celebrate the arrival of the year 2000. This time capsule contains information on the most important historical events from the last 1000 years as well as sounds and pictures. You can read about this time capsule by going to:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/
How does a time capsule work for our class?
You’re going to create your own written time capsule for our class. You get to decide what to place into your time machine: you can write anything you like. The only real requirement is that you write enough to make it worth receiving your time capsule back 10 years from now. If you don’t write much or don’t say anything interesting, you future self is going to be very ticked off with your present day self. So don’t let yourself down!
I will not read your time capsule in any detail, so you can include some personal information if you like. I want to respect your privacy. The only thing I will do is check to be sure you have put some effort into this task. A full page of writing gets credit while 2 lines won’t. If you make a reasonable effort at all to do the assignment, I will give you full credit.
You will send your time capsule to me via email. I will store your email for 10 years (luckily, email messages don’t take up a lot of space). I will then send your time capsule message back to you by email. If that email comes back to me as undeliverable, I’ll try to send your time capsule to you by regular mail. This process isn’t perfect, but it has worked for most students I have had, and I have been doing this time capsule activity for many years now (I have lots of piles of letters and emails waiting to be delivered at specific dates). If all else fails, send me an email in 10 years and ask to get your time capsule back. I will keep all the time capsules on file until each one is successfully delivered, so write me back when you receive yours. You can always get my current email address from my web page (which will probably be at IUP or search for me on the web).
On the Issue of Trust
Again, let me stress that as your teacher I will respect your privacy and guard your time capsule carefully. This is a valuable assignment, I believe, one that has a lot of future value for people. But the entire assignment only works if you can trust me. Since I realize that, and what this assignment to be a success for your class and for future classes, I view your trust in the assignment as sacred and will do everything I can to honor that trust.
Your Career Forecaster’s Contents
The interesting part of creating a time capsule is deciding what should go into it. The fun part is opening that time capsule back up many years from now and seeing what you put in. Often, you might not even remember that you created the time capsule until the day to open it arrives. I’m going to give you a few guidelines for how to make your Time Machine. You don’t have to follow these exactly, but they should help you create an interesting time capsule that you’ll enjoy receiving 10 years from now. As you write, you might find it useful to include section headings for each part. There are lots of suggestions here, so choose the ones that you think are most important. Most good time capsules are a couple of pages long by the time they are finished.
The Date
Record the date you finish writing up your time capsule.
Contact Information
This part is really important. I’ll start with your email address, so if that changes, you might want to let me know. I’m going to send your time capsule back to you in 10 years time, hopefully by email. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try to use your mailing address, so please give me an address that is not likely to change (perhaps your parents’ address). I’ll do the best I can to get your time capsule back to you.
- Your full name
- All the email addresses you use
- A permanent mailing address
Self Description
Write a paragraph or two describing yourself at this point in time. Include things like:
- your weight and height
- the type of clothing you usually wear
- the type of job you have
- what your college major is
- etc.
Also say something about your personality: are you a nice person, cheerful, outgoing, quiet, or what? How would your friends describe you?
Career Forecast
Next I want you to discuss your career plans. What sort of job do you hope to get after graduation? What type of salary do you hope to earn? How long do you expect to stay at your first job? What is your long term work goal? What sort of position do you hope to have as you move upward? Will you go to graduate school at some point? At what age do you plan to retire? How do you hope to spend your retirement years?
This Course (English 222: Technical Writing)
Ok, we’ve spent a whole semester together. I REALLY hope you learned a few useful things about document design, writing effective instructions, and creating work-focused writing. Take a few moments to write a paragraph about what you learned from this course and what you enjoyed about it. What’s one thing you want to remember for the future? (Just for fun you could also throw in something you want to remember about Dr. Pagnucci, since I made you do this assignment; hopefully I’ll still have my wits about me in 10 year’s time when I’m supposed to send this out to you!)
Technology
Since technology impacts technical writing so much, we’ve focused quite a bit on how technology influences the writing in our world. Take a few minutes to discuss the technologies which are being most widely used today. Which technologies do you use regularly? Which technologies can’t you live without? What do you think are some likely changes to how we will use technology in 10 year’s time? Put down your thoughts here to see how things turn out in the future.
Your Family
Our families drive a lot of us crazy. But still, there are few people as important to us. Write a little about your spouse, children, parents, grandparents, or any other relatives who matter to you. Record:
- what your relations look like
- things they often say
- things they often do
- things that annoy you about them
- things you love about them
You might even write about some of the relatives you do not like—maybe things will have improved in 10 year’s time!
Your Friends
Spend a little time talking about the people who matter to you. Do you have a significant other? Who are you friends? Record their full names, what they look like, and perhaps their addresses. What do you like about these people? Why are they important to you? Some friends will stay with you forever, but sadly in 10 years time you might not even remember some of these people. So make a record of them now.
Your Interests
Write about the things you really like and try to explain why you like them so much:
- What do you like to do in your free time?
- What are your favorite television shows?
- What are your favorite movies?
- What kind of music do you listen to and on what radio stations?
- What hobbies do you have?
- Do you exercise?
- What are your favorite foods and restaurants?
- What are your favorite books?
- What are your favorite sports teams?
Record what you like now, so you can see how your tastes change over time.
The Era You Live in Now
In addition to the technology issues we covered earlier, record some other information about the year you are living in now. This will help remind you about the historical time period when you created this time capsule. Include any information you think is important such as:
- the current president
- the state of the U.S. and world economies
- major events happening in the news
- major issues and problems effecting the world (such as global warming)
- the names of famous athletes and celebrities of the current time period
Your View of the World
Include some of your personal views about this time in history, such as:
- What political party do side with and why?
- What problems in the world most worry you?
- What are you doing to make the world a better place?
- What is your opinion of some of the famous people (business and political leaders, rock and movie stars, athletes) in the world today?
Your Hopes and Dreams
In addition to your career goals, think about your other goals and aspirations for the future:
- Do you expect to be married in the future? Is there someone special in your life now who you hope will still be hanging around you in 10 year’s time?
- Do you plan to have children?
- Is there anything you hope to learn in the future (how to rock climb, how to ballroom dance, etc.)?
- Is there anything you hope to see (the Eifel Tower, the Grand Canyon, etc.)?
- What do you hope the world will be like in 10 year’s time?
- What other dreams do you have for yourself?
I hope lots of your dreams work out for you.
Things to Treasure
Include a couple of items in your time capsule that really matter to you. These might include:
- a quote or saying you want to always remember
- a description of one or two of your possessions which are most important to you
- the one thing that makes life worth living
- your favorite place to visit
- anything else that is extremely important to you
Seal Up Your Career Forecaster and Email It Off
Send your career forecaster by email to Dr. Pagnucci:
To: pagnucci@iup.edu
Subject: Career Forecaster-Launch in 2017
Body: Paste your time machine message into the body of your email. Do NOT send your Career Forecaster as an attachment since that will be harder to keep track of and access over 10 year’s time.
Delete Your Career Forecaster
Once I receive your Career Forecaster, I will send you a quick email confirming that I received it from you and that I have safely stored the Career Forecaster away. This confirmation will be your verification that you successfully completed this task.
Once you get your confirmation, delete your own copy of the Career Forecaster. I know that will be hard since you will have poured a lot of your thoughts and feelings into your Career Forecaster. But, the key to any successful time capsule project is that it cannot be opened ahead of time. If you keep your Career Forecaster on your computer, it will only be a temptation to look at it early. More importantly, time capsules also hold greater value when there is a chance that you might not get them back. Knowing you might not see your time capsule again will make it that much more special when you do finally receive it 10 years from now. You are putting things away for the future, and we are never sure what the future will hold—it’s part of the fun.
The Power of Writing
So why do this activity as your final exam for English 222: Technical Writing? It’s a chance for you to think about what is important to you and the act of writing can preserve some of those important things. This task is also a way to communicate some of your most important values and beliefs to yourself 10 years in the future. We don’t get a lot of chances to teach ourselves things. But, with this Career Forecaster, you actually get an opportunity to teach your future self what your present-day self thought was important. In the future, the Career Forecaster will also be a way to research who you were in the past. This Career Forecaster will become an artifact 10 years from now that will help you look back to this time in your life: it will help you see how good you were at forecasting your career (hopefully you’ll have done a better job predicting the future than many weather forecasters do!).
Besides all of those benefits, most of my students over the years have said this is a fun assignment to do. That’s probably reason enough.
I should warn you that when you read your Career Forecaster in 10 year’s time, it might make you a little sad as well as happy. Some of the things you recorded that mattered to you will be gone. Other things you will suddenly remember, and you will wonder how you could ever have forgotten those things. If you put some real effort into this task, this Career Forecaster will really matter to you, and you will absolutely want to get it back 10 years from now.
I hope this last assignment, like others in this course, helps teach you that writing is one of the most powerful tools we humans have ever created. The written word can get to the heart of everything that matters to us as people. I also hope that your Career Forecaster is just one of many important pieces of writing you will create in the years to come.
Best of luck with all the writing, technical and otherwise, you’ll do in the future!
Ciao,
Gian Pagnucci