Summary of Interview

I interviewed Ambassador McMullen, a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Iowa who spoke about writing as a diplomat and a professor. The nature of writing as a diplomat is short analyses to relay information to policy makers. These are called cables, which he said he had to get used to because they were so concise and were not like the long essays he wrote in college, such as a dissertation. The role of this writing is to inform policy makers of inferences made based on information about the country's issues or circumstances. He emphasized the point that the most important part of the cable over his 30 years as a diplomat became the "so what" instead of the "what." This is because the "what" became easily accessible, but the analysis was still necessary to relay. Cables are very specific to a diplomatic profession, and high school seniors can benefit from knowing this information because it's very different from writing in other professions. He also spoke about writing as a professor, where the most common genre of writing for him is emails. The role of this writing was simply to make appointments, relay information to students, and communicate with other professors. As a diplomat, he said he wrote about 3 times more than as a professor. The type of writing is very different in these two professions, even though obviously his major didn't change, he had both of these opportunities.