Scarlet Letter Secrets
By Grace
Leuenberger
The Good News about Bad Words
ow!” (They pause.) “Now, what do you think you’ll do with that?” Are you familiar with this interaction? If so, you might have majored in one of the following areas of study during college:
And study I did. From poetry to public speaking, communication theory to creative writing, I became a student of words. I learned how language could inspire or indoctrinate, assuage or anger, connect or confuse. I learned how to craft sentences like the one you just read and why alliterations are so alluring. Finally, I learned a very important lesson: Words are the secret to success. Nowhere was this secret more obvious than in the Career Services office of my alma mater. As a student worker, I had an up-close view: a slight change in adjectives on a resume, a liberally edited cover letter, or an interview sprinkled with a few strategically chosen anecdotes could mean the difference between someone getting the job and someone crying in the corner office to one of the career counselors because they didn’t get the job. Words are the secret to success. Once I entered the professional world myself, a whole other lexicon emerged that set apart the professionally proficient from the professionally prolific. Being able to cor-
‘‘W a. b. c. d.
English History Philosophy Communications
I had the privilege of studying two of the above: English and Communications. Well, to be specific, the latter was “Communication Studies,” the academy’s rebranded name for a discipline that no one outside of Communication Studies majors took seriously, which is why we added the word “studies” to the end of it. 85
