WRD alumna Natalie Schawel graduated in June 2018 with an MA in WRD with a concentration in teaching and a certification in TESOL. We recently spoke to Natalie to learn more about her transition from teaching high school English to her current position as a Web Content Specialist for Care Content, and how her experiences in the WRD program helped to guide her career path.
What in your academic and professional career led you to pursue an MA in WRD?
Prior to starting the program, I was a high school English teacher, and I wanted to enhance the way that I was teaching writing to my students. I worked at an international boarding school in Lake Forest, in the suburbs [of Chicago] and I felt like there was another way to engage them in real life writing, so I returned to school to do that.
I was teaching and working on my Masters at the same time at DePaul, so I would go up to the suburbs during the day to work and then make it back down here for class. Those were some pretty full days.
Describe your career and research interests as you were going through the MA in WRD program? How did you customize the program to meet your needs?
I think my time in the program can be split into three main areas of focus. At first it was really teaching writing, and I just wanted to enhance [how I did] that. DePaul offer[s] some really good opportunities for that, because they have those intro courses for undergrads and the same professors that are teaching those are teaching at the graduate level on how to teach those.
And then the switch from just teaching writing to teaching speakers of other languages kind of happened when I [took] Global Englishes. I took a couple classes with Jason Schneider, and I didn’t want to stop taking classes with him because they were so interesting. I took Global Englishes and spent time learning about how TESOL functions in and out of the US and it was so real for me with my students; even though he was teaching about teaching students in other countries, it was so applicable to who I was teaching every single day. I kept taking those classes and he [Jason} said to me, “Hey, why not consider a TESOL certification?” So I thought, “Well okay!”
It wasn’t until the very end, maybe my last quarter, that I wanted to work on my own writing more and I think it was probably the class called [WRD 515] The Essay with Pete Vandenberg where we wrote about our personal experiences and narratives of our own lives when I realized I missed doing that? I missed honing my own skills which is really important for teaching too. I think a lot of teachers don’t work on their own skills, and that can be really unfortunate. So it was that last… maybe quarter or so where I was like, “Oh, this is great, I love writing.”
You recently moved from working in education to professional/technical writing? Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to work at Care Content and what that change has been like?
Towards the end of the program, I got an email on the MAWRD listserv for an internship opening up about health care, and I thought, “Well that sounds awesome.” I had had a lot of experience in the healthcare industry personally and other people I knew were familiar with it professionally, so I decided to give it a shot. I reached out right when I graduated from DePaul and I interned during that summer break after graduation. That next year, they offered me a full-time position.
At Care Content we write for healthcare organizations and hospitals around the U.S. so the biggest switch from when I was teaching is that I am the one doing the writing and getting the feedback. The stakes are also much higher. It’s the healthcare industry, so if you don’t say something right, you have the potential to actually put people’s health at risk.
How have you used your experiences from WRD in your current position? How did WRD prepare you for the professional writing world?
I really do think that a lot of the professors at DePaul gave me so much good feedback on my own writing. Being able to hear what someone else thinks about your writing and learning how not to get defensive and understanding that your readers are trying to help you improve and support you, that’s something I got from the program for sure.
I definitely felt like my confidence was built in WRD. I walked out of there really equipped to showcase my writing. And [my employer] saw it. She said, “You really know how to write for your audience. “ That’s a big thing about what we do at Care Content; we have really specific audiences. Sometimes I’m writing to a patient, or a potential patient, sometimes I’m writing to a hospital COO, sometimes it’s someone with a specific condition. You have to be able to alter the way you write for different audiences. Rhetorical situations feel real to me now and DePaul prepped me for that real-world writing.
Do you have any advice for current and future WRD students?
It’s a tough program in a very unique way. I think it challenges you if you really allow it to. It makes you ask questions, but sometimes you will leave classes without an answer and that’s the point. Sometimes these questions we have are really messy and it’s really good to work through that with other like-minded individuals. But it can also be frustrating at times because you’ll just sit and ask, “Well what really is the best way to write, or to teach writing?” and those aren’t answers that exist. So think you have to be okay with that uncertainty.
The other thing that is cool about this program that I would tell students to take advantage of is the variety of people in the program. You’re not just working with teachers or professional writers. This program attracts all different kinds of students and there are so many sub-disciplines and focuses within writing studies and people end up going on to do so many different jobs afterwards and that variety is pretty unique and pretty special.