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>> Michael: First of all, it helps to have a methodical approach to writing from square one at university 


because everyone has to write at university, 


and it's crazy not to at least have some kind of structured approach to it. 


I think that if you get nothing else, you get a deeper appreciation for writing in whatever you end up doing. 


But I guess the deeper study of rhetoric, 


which is what I get really excited about in a nerdy way, 


is because it is more embedded in those deeper questions of why the university exists, 


what is the point in training people to think critically and use language critically, 


and how university graduates then transfer those skills into their lives 


and how they relate what they're doing in the classroom to their days. 


So I think that rhetoric ideally does all of those things. 


It was really interesting to be learning things in my university courses about technical communication 


and different ways of looking at rhetoric, and actually 


be able to draw links between that and what I was doing the rest of the day. 


Having these two parts of my life that never intersected, 


and where you had always had big shifts between the two, it was nice to have a more integrated day. 


For university graduates to go out and spend their days on computers, 


writing emails, writing briefing notes, talking notes, anything, 


you end up practicing rhetoric whether you think of it in those terms or not. 


It's definitely stood me in good stead in terms of working, the daily work that I did. 


It brought a perspective of how other people use language and how you put across your point of view. 


I would love to study rhetoric as a postgrad student, 


probably at the moment in the States because the programs there are fantastic. 


It'd be exciting to see some of the really great departments around rhetoric. 


I'd love to go study in the States and then come back. 


I think there's a space here in Australia for rhetoric.  


The biggest thing I've learned is that semi-romantic idea that language is a coherent force that binds people together through the way they communicate, 


and that there is a way to think about language and all the different ways it is used. One very big thing. 


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