Hello,

My name is Dani Sevel. My professional experience encompasses the Marketing and Communications field, just in several different industries. I’m currently in the Marketing and Communications field as it relates to the security industry. I’ve worked in the Marketing field for about four years now. Prior to working in Marketing, I have worked on and off for about five plus years in the defense contracting industry. I have held administrative job titles, titles dealing with deployment on the private security/military side, I’ve worked in operations and have worked in the insurance industry. I don’t necessarily know what industry I most like. I think the quote in life I most identify with is from Mark Twain; “the two most important days in your life, the day you were born and the day you find out why.” I feel like purpose and discovery play a huge role in self-discovery and a huge role in being your best self.

I’m still deciding where my interests lie and what my 5-year plan looks like, but in the meantime, I have a wide array of research topic interests. I did an in-depth research paper on Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification and its uses/benefits in regards to military torture tactics, which I found to be very interesting and also a project I could spend the next 8 years working on only to need another 8 years to complete. I’d like to get into the technical writing field, contract specialist area, or grant writing field. I enjoy how different layers and integral parts of a company have an equal part in creating this final product, this contract when in relation to contract proposals and bids. My Bachelor’s degree is in English, Writing & Rhetoric, which I received from George Mason University. I don’t feel like my biblical worldview has influenced my career choices, rather it was my education and experience. I am Jewish, and don’t feel I have the same “worldview” as what’s being asked. I think perhaps that my personal and first-hand experience with “my” biblical worldview has influenced me as a person, not necessarily on my career path, just as a person in general. It’s the teachings of the old testament that have shaped me as a person, it focuses on how you treat others, not to be ignorant of others’ beliefs and tto basically be a morally good person. I believe those teachings have influenced me as a person, which has in turn, influenced my career growth, but not the career field i have steered towards.

From the reading, something that stuck out to me most was from David Dobrin, “any statement embodies alternity- states what is and simultaneously brings into the domain of consciousness what isn’t,” (Johnson-Eilola, Selber, 28). I think, the way I can best connect my responses to the specific text mentioned, is for me to press on my uncertainty of research interest and career path. In relation to the passage by David Dobrin that I found interesting, my uncertainty too can be considered ambiguous, just as Dobrin’s argument. Dobrin;s argument unveils uncertainty and dissolves its own pretenses. Looking at his claim, “…states what it is and simultaneously states what it isn’t” (Johnson-Eilola, Selber, 28), we can see his use of defining something while still not knowing what it is could relate to my uncertainty in identifying just one topic area of interest.

A. Selber, Stuart, and Johndan Johnson-Eilola, editors. “History, Rhetoric and Humanism.” Central Works in Technical Communication, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 20–32.