learn about me
What is the opposite of a know-it-all?
If it’s someone who is constantly seeking answers, then that’s me.
I am curious. I am keenly aware that there is a lot that I don’t know, and I am always trying to fill in the gaps. In today’s digital environment, all the answers are literally at our fingertips. It is certainly a marvel that such a wealth of information is within such easy reach. It is immensely empowering to hold nearly all of humanity’s acquired knowledge in my back pocket.
I make it a point to take full advantage. I look everything up.
I am an insatiable learner.
Conversations, news articles, and simple interaction with the world are all sources of topics for exploration. I try to take every opportunity to learn something from every experience.
This website is the perfect manifestation of my obsession with learning. As a writer, I needed a writing portfolio to share with potential employers. So, instead of sharing a collection of disjointed web links to my past assignments, I set out to familiarize myself with web-building tools and techniques to create a well-structured and practical website to display my work—and then I wrote about the experience as an example of technical writing to add to my portfolio.
So, that’s me. I am a learner and a writer. I learn things, then I write about what I’ve learned. In my professional life, I have learned and written about the telecom, tech, and meeting planning industries, legal and financial concepts, event promotion, and news items.
Fittingly, one of my favorite things to learn about is writing.
Sounds strange, but I do spend a fair amount of my free time not only reading for information or entertainment but also doing a next-level examination of what I’m reading, including the words chosen and techniques used by the writer.
When I am writing, I consult the AP Stylebook and online word-usage guides with a frequency that boarders on obsession. I want to get it right. I want to understand the logic behind the rules that have consensus as well as the controversies that leave room for alternate approaches (consistently applied, of course).
I am a complete word nerd too. Like most writers, I get a thrill from coming up with just the right word to precisely convey a feeling or idea. I also analyze how other writers and speakers use their words.
I look up new words and even some familiar ones that I want to understand better.
I interrupt my own reading to Google obscure or interesting words—research that often digs into the word’s origins and its changing use over time. I make mental notes during friendly conversations about what terms or topics to look up later. I pause television shows and news podcasts to ask Siri to define words or references that are new to me. And I admit, it is rather scandalous how I sometimes can’t tear myself away from my Dictionary.com app (honestly, I do like it for the articles).
My formal education focused on literature, creative writing, journalism, communications, and business. Both in school and on my own, I have enjoyed learning about philosophy and history too—especially history’s stories of how real people experienced their world and what they thought of it. This fascination with people and their views stretches through history to the present day: I read a lot of news to keep tabs on the latest issues and to follow the nuances of what people are talking about now.
Both in my learning and in my writing, I like to put things into context. I believe that appreciating the bigger picture is vital to understanding and presenting accurate and useful information. Even when the scope of a particular writing piece is limited, I find it useful to consider the framework of background influences and to look beyond the issue at hand to its broader implications.
It may sound like unnecessary work, but exploring and discovering new ways of understanding the world seem to me to be always worth the effort. There’s nothing like coming away from an encounter (in literature or life) and feeling richer for the learning experience it offered. It may be unrealistic to ever become a true know-it-all, but at least I am enjoying my attempts to learn it all.
So, that’s what there is to know about me. I hope you like what you’ve learned.