Professional Statement 1

Professional Statement

Competency and receptiveness to criticism; those are the values I seek to refine to improve my
workplace writing and communication. As a soon-to-be graduate seeking to enter the research
workforce, I contemplate how my undergraduate education translates into usable, practical
workplace skills. My undergraduate career at Marquette cultivated an understanding of genres,
academic writing skills such as intertextuality and collaboration, and exposure to different discourse
communities. However, I am cognizant of the fact that environmental influences will push me to
improve some skills over others (i.e. navigating channels of communication, collaboration, and
intertextuality). I anticipate the next phase of my life will help improve my competency at navigating
channels of communication, collaboration, and intertextuality.

My time at Marquette University has come to an end, but my educational aspirations have not ended
here. I intend on applying to doctoral programs in psychology or human development with a
research focus on LGBT health or mood disorders within the next year. At Marquette, involvement
in undergraduate research labs provided ample opportunities to gain an understanding of research
design and psychological statistics and measurements, and present at professional conferences. For
example, I invested over two academic years in research labs within the Psychology Department and
graduated with experience at SPSS (a statistical program commonly used in psychological research)
and earned the opportunity to transform a poster project into a manuscript.

Research labs function as one unit, every assignment scaffolded and contributed to the professor’s
published manuscripts. On a macroscopic level, the lab team contributed individual assignments
which the professor would build a manuscript which was meant to be submitted to an academic,
peer-reviewed journal. However, it was more than contribution without discussion, research labs
were collaborative. Collaboration was possible only under the mentorship of faculty and graduate
students striving to teach us how to understand academic genres and utilize them within our own
work. In doing so, I became a budding scientist, and joined the larger discussion of research
literature that engaged with past bodies of research. These skills built a foundation that will allow me
to be successful in entry-level research positions, but are not sufficient for my future aspirations.
Other workplace communication skills necessary to become an effective worker.

When I begin working as an entry-level research assistant, I will have to learn how to properly
navigate channels of communication. This is a skill I will have to quickly become adept at because I
believe it reflects that I am conscientious of their time when I communicate through the correct
channels. Interestingly, I find this skill is emphasized in our society because of environmental
influences such as technology. In office settings, it is important to know there is a correct way to
communicate with colleagues and supervisors. For example, in my experience there have been
meetings for information that could be better communicated via email. Those situations
communicate that our time invested in other work-related tasks is not valued, and I seek to avoid
that in the workplace. Down the line, I will have to gain a mastery of this when it comes to
collaborative work.
 Professional Statement 2

Collaborative writing is interpersonal, it requires groups to “challenge, modify, use, build on, and
add to the utterances of others to join in co-operative competition with them in the process of text
and knowledge making” (Bremner, 2018, p. 55). To do so, respect of time and passion are
requirements. I often find that group projects are not collaborative works if the tone is explicitly set
at the beginning with clear-cut division of tasks. Group projects become collaborative when there
are additional, set check-in points such as group meetings to revise projects or practice through
PowerPoint presentations. Learning to collaborate also necessitates receptiveness to criticism, which
can be daunting without the proper communication skills. For example, in one of my research labs I
am writing the introduction and method section for a manuscript my professor aims to submit for
publication, which requires writing various drafts and receiving back large amounts of constructive
criticism in the form of revisions and suggested future directions. At first, it was intimidating to see
the gap between my writing and what was expected, but at the same time I understood the
suggestions were meant to improve my skills and to close that gap. As I enter the workforce, how
colleagues provide constructive criticism will differ from person to person based on the professional
relationship. I anticipate collaborative work will allow me to learn and grow with new research, new
people, and scientists of different disciplines.

To engage with those groups of people, understanding of genres (e.g. academic research articles and
journals and dissertations) and how to synthesize the knowledge is expected. Bremner (2018) writes,
“workplace writing is intertextual in that writers are collaborating… it is resonant with the discourse
of colleagues and ongoing conversation of the institution” (p. 43), and indicates that not knowing
how to properly draw from other sources can result in plagiarism. Reading academic journal articles
can prove to be difficult, it uses succinct language; for some this can lead to burnout due to the
scientific language, but thinking about new research as intellectually engaging can lead to learning
and growth. In my workplace writing, I hope to gain an understanding of current research so that I
may join research discourse communities and hope to use intertextuality to grow as a budding
scientist. That may mean creating summary sheets for journal articles and establishing a database to
store the documents, which over the years will inevitably contain hundreds of journal articles and
their summaries.

Learning to grow cultivate these skills will be difficult. Passion can sometimes feel nonexistent the
closer I get to graduation, but I believe setting my eyes on future goals and how to attain them will
allow me to cultivate channel communication, collaboration, and intertextuality. Up to now, I have
gotten more than I would have imagined out of my past research experiences. Finally, I hope to
empower the next generation of budding scholars as I have been mentored by two phenomenal
Marquette professors and countless graduate students.
 Professional Statement 3

References

Bremner, S. (2018). Workplace writing: Beyond the text. London: Routledge.