You Need This If You Want To Live!

I write automotive training materials. First of all, I'm a total car nerd. I like knowing how stuff works, and I like being able to tell people how it works and why it's important. This also makes me a control freak...but that's another story.

In any case, whenever I think that I'm not saving lives or finding cures for cancer, I remind myself that I failed math three times and all of the science programs required math. That's why I settled on English. That and the fact that I wanted to have a reason to read so much. The downside of English was Shakespeare, but luckily, I caught on to how the class was taught. Any passage the prof read aloud was going to be on the test. I underlined it in my book, paperclipped the page and then wrote notes in the gutters.

We could use our books on the tests.

But I always liked science, and always wanted to do something scientific. Technical writing is English and Science mixed together.

I get my science fix by studying products, and then explaining how they work. My job is perfect because it lets me teach people stuff, but it eliminates those pesky and irritating face-to-face relations. And so I teach sales people about cars. And they want to know how to sell more cars. They want to know more about the competition so they can shoot it down and make it look like the hero car is a thinking person's best choice. And when they need to look stuff up, they want to know where to find it. FAST.

I write a lot of statistics, and try to present them in an organized fashion. I also write blurbs about how stuff works in layperson's terms, but merely informing people isn't enough. I have to motivate them. Fear is a huge motivator. A lot of automotive safety stuff exploits this knowledge, so I get to write content with this flavor: YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT IF YOU WANT TO LIVE.

It's in all caps because it's that important.

Scaring people into buying stuff works, by the way. Some manufacturers are still talking about Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems. They were mandated back in 2008, so they're on EVERY vehicle. It's the law. But it bears mentioning on spec sheets because people are afraid that if some cars list it as a feature and others don't, then that means THAT ONE ISN'T AS SAFE.

It's the same with airbags. How many airbags? As many as a manufacturer can fit into a vehicle. More airbags = safer vehicle...but that's not necessarily true. More airbags help compensate for a lighter vehicle construction. For example, your car will still crumple like a pinata if a semi hits you at more than 30 mph...but boy-oh-boy, those 37 airbags will inflate and then explode on impact. And that'll be something to see. If you're still conscious. But you've got 37 airbags. And that's 27 more than the leading competitor, earning the hero car a five-star safety rating from NHTSA. Lah-ti-friggin-dah....and nyah, nyah, nyah.

I don't save lives and I'm not finding cures for cancer...but I look forward to going to work every day and learning new ways to think about what people do, how they do it, why they do it, and how I can help them do it better while they pay me.

It's science without math....and it's English without Shakespeare.

SCORE.