Writ 2000 had many unique attributes as a class, least of which was that the professor, Richard Colby, had lots of data on past students. This provided unique material that caught my attention due to the personal relevance. For this assignment, I was asked to analyze the data in the linked google sheet below and highlight any trends that I found. The results are as follow:
Using the data provided in these google sheets, I created an observational research analysis. This material is data the Professor Colby has been collecting for years throughout his teaching career, and proves interesting as a data set as it changes every quarter. Here’s what I found at the time of analysis.
The first observation that I had with this data is that the subject pool is 67% female and 33% male. The data is compiled of 65 answers to the survey taken at the beginning of WRIT 2000. The majors of survey participants are diverse, though the biggest categories come in at 33% and 28%, responding social sciences and humanities, respectively.
I found that there were significant similarities between how often participants engaged in assigned reading and writing for each course, with the most common answer being 3-4 hours, followed by 5-8 and 9-12 in both categories. The answers for writing were less spread out than the answers for reading, with more participants answering in the aforementioned categories compared to the writing question, but I found that the general answer trends were consistent across graphs. People who spend 5-8 hours reading and writing for class tended to have more positive answers when it came to significance of writing ability in the modern world when compared to twenty years ago, in fact only 4 out of the 16 subjects answered a question with anything other than the most positive answer (Often, greater need, very confident, essential) when it came to rhetorical importance in the future. This brings me to my first claim, which is that the sampling for this survey suggests that the average person finds writing, communication, and comprehension very important for future career success, regardless of occupation. This ties in with “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic” by Robert Scott, because despite the inability for professionals to agree on its definition, it has been and continues to be a very important aspect of professional life. In the article there is emphasis on the terms “certainty” and “knowledge,” both of which are important attributes to one’s professional career. For example, both a car mechanic and doctor must have a certain level of knowledge within their field, or else they would not be qualified and thus employed. This knowledge must be transferred to the next generations of doctors and mechanics in order for the ability to remain consistent in the field, thus inferring that communication and rhetoric remain centrally important in a professional setting.
Next, I argue that the distinction between blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs represents more personal bias than legitimacy. Of course, this is a nuanced claim, but considering that the majority of participants agreed that there is a greater need in today’s world to be able to write well to succeed, with 75% of all participants agreeing to either a “greater need” or “somewhat greater need,” I argue that this would remain consistent regardless of the job that one holds at a particular moment in time. There is a need in all career fields for critical thinking and ability to communicate well, either verbally or written. 44% of survey participants stated that the ability to write well is “not very important” for blue-collar jobs whereas 70% of survey participants responded that being able to write well is “essential” for white collar and professional jobs. While I believe that there is an inherent bias in the phrasing of these questions, as I would certainly argue that there are blue-collar jobs that qualify as “professional,” I think that there is necessity in both categories of work. According to The United States Department of Labor, people change careers roughly 5-7 times during their working life. With this in mind, it seems logically essential to diversify one’s skillsets, and considering that over 75% of survey participants responded that there is a generally greater need for literacy and ability to write well, it is reasonable to conclude that the connotations surrounding the terms “blue-collar” and “white-collar” are more bogged down by personal bias than rational thought.
