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Recently,
I've heard other STC members talking about the economy, especially
the rising cost of fuel, food, health care, and other necessities,
and the falling value of their homes and investments. For some STC
members, their membership in STC is a prime candidate for an "extra" item to cut from their personal or professional budgets.
You may be thinking about not renewing your membership in STC
when it expires, or if you aren't a current member, you may be
having second thoughts about joining STC. If you still plan to renew
or join STC, you may also be thinking about cutting back on meetings
or events.
Before
you decide not to renew or join STC, or skip a meeting you'd like
to attend, I'd like to ask you this question: Over your lifetime,
what is your most valuable and biggest asset?
A.
Your home
B.
Your education
C.
Your career
D.
Your retirement plan
Answer:
Your career is your biggest and most important asset. Your career
gives you the income to get the necessities of life, such as food,
clothing, and shelter, and also to get an education, real estate, a
retirement plan, and other investments and assets.
When you think about how much of your time every day you
spend working and how much of your lifetime is spent working, you
can see why your career is so important. That's why it's
important to manage your career well.
STC
helps you manage your career by helping you to:
·
Launch your technical
communication career or transition into a technical communication
career
·
Learn new skills and
enhance existing ones
·
Find opportunities to
network with fellow technical communication professionals
·
Find a new job or a
better job
·
Launch an independent
technical communication career
·
Find help when you need
it
·
Improve your "soft"
skills, such as public speaking or team-building skills
The
cost of STC membership is "chump change" compared to the value
it adds to your career. For example, STC's free or low-cost
articles, seminars, and conferences give you knowledge and skills to
not only keep up with changes in the fast-paced technical
communication field, but also get ready for the technical
communication jobs of the future.
On
a personal note, I've now been through four "career
transitions" in my eight years as a technical communicator. In
some cases, they occurred because of circumstances beyond my
control, such as economic conditions; in others, there were things
that I could have done or not done that might have led to a
different outcome. In every case, I found STC to be a helpful
resource to manage these transitions. STC proved valuable as a go-to
for technical communication job leads, ways to improve my technical
and interpersonal skills, and just to know that I wasn't alone in
my career transition. Also, in
every case, employers and potential employers noticed my membership
in STC on my resume, and some even knew of me from STC.
As
President of STC Pittsburgh, part of my job is promoting the chapter
and the Society, and I wrote this column as a way to promote STC and
to make a case that STC is more important to your career in times
like these. But I also wrote it to explain how STC helped me and why
I joined STC.
Visit
stc.org
to join or renew. Also,
ask me about membership, because not only am I STC Pittsburgh's
President, I'm also a member!
Bryce A. Walat
Technical Writer/Editor
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